


trouble in the heartland

by bygoneboy



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Heavy Drinking, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: reyes is trying to be a better man. ryder is just trying to hold it together. neither of them seem to be fooling anybody.unsent emails, phone-comm sex, and triple-distilled whiskey ahead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i legit wrote this because a boy played [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TtFtUQ8iDA) for me the night after i finished reyes’ romance arc

 

_i exist in two places. here,_

_and where you are_. -- margaret atwood

 

...

 

There’s a deadly sort of quiet on Kadara, in the long hour before the sun crawls over the mountain-peaks, and that’s when Reyes chooses to stake out the marketplace. Collective uniforms are still working to scrape up the hungover remnants of last night from the pavement, and the desert-dust air is still warming into orange shadows. By the time the vendors have begun to set up shop, he’s been there for a solid half hour already.

 

The merchant is a salarian. Leaky-eyed, occasionally tight lipped, greedier than most. They’ve done a few jobs together before, for better or for worse-- even in the face of Reyes’ best-played hand, he looks annoyingly unmoved. The salarian has the goods, of that he's sure; Reyes had monitored the delivery himself. But if there’s one downside to being the Charlatan, it’s that no one else knows you’re the Charlatan.

 

Or-- he corrects himself-- _almost_ no one else.

 

That’s what he gets for stepping out of the shadows, and staging a flashy show.

 

“How many times have I come through for you before?” he presses, a sliver of impatience tugging at his damp collar. “You owe me, just this once.”

 

The vendor scratches at his neck, weighing the worth of it in his mind. Then he beckons Reyes forward, and leans in: “They came in last week,” he whispers, “but be _quiet_ about it, for everyone’s sake. Keema would have my head if she knew how I got ahold of them.”

 

Reyes snorts, managing to wrangle it into a cough at the last second. Keema had arranged the transfer before the cargo had even made it planetside; she’d been the one to tip Reyes off in the first place. “Let’s have a look. Discreetly, of course.”

 

“Of course,” echoes the salarian, blinking rapidly as he brings the case out from behind the counter, cracking the lid two inches. “Five left, straight from Aya--”

 

“And how much apiece?”

 

“Seventy-five credits.”

 

“What!” says Reyes, taken aback. “Come on, really?”

 

 _“Really,”_  the salarian mocks him, unimpressed. “Do you know how much trouble I went through to get these?”

 

He does, actually. But he bites his tongue. “They’re overripe, I can see that from here. Drop the price-- fifty.”

 

“No deal.”

 

“Fifty-five, then.”

 

The salarian looks disdainful. “Cut the shit, Vidal, this is Kadara. Since when are you fussy over mangoes?”

 

“They’re not _mangoes,”_ says Reyes, increasingly bothered and embarrassingly defensive, “they’re _paripo_. And they’re not for _me,_ they’re for--”

 

It’s just his laugh.

 

That’s all he hears, distantly, off somewhere behind him. But there’s enough hope bottled up in his chest to spin him on his heel, his heart leaping into his throat, searching through the early sea of faces:

 

Brown hair soft in the sunlight, white uniform sticking out like a sore thumb. He’s got a bag slung over one shoulder with the Initiative logo patched onto the side. He’s leaning across a counter with his hand propped under his chin, chatting with an angaran merchant, smiling like the sun.

 

And Reyes should be subtle. Should sidle up behind him and slide one arm snug around his waist, should say _you look like you’re waiting for someone--_

 

“Ryder,” he blurts out, before he can stop himself; then, louder, “Scott!”

 

Ryder startles from across the market square, turning toward the echo of his voice. “Wha-- Reyes!?”

 

The minute their eyes meet the Pathfinder is pushing through the crowd, his whole face lit up like an active relay, eyes shining sky-blue. He breaks into a run as the distance between them shrinks, the breath is punched from Reyes’ lungs as Ryder very nearly knocks him sideways, “What are you doing here?” Ryder exclaims, breathless, grabbing Reyes by both arms and holding him at shoulders length. “I thought you’d be at Tartarus!”

 

“I thought you’d be--” Reyes chuckles, feeling oddly lightheaded. “Anywhere but here, really. Pathfinding, you know. Saving the day.”

 

“We were in the area, we’ve got a lead on-- well, I guess I shouldn’t say. But we needed to refuel, and I thought-- I mean, I wanted…”

 

His smile flickers, then falters; Reyes misses it immediately, immensely. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d seen him smile like that. On the Tempest vidcon, after the skies had cleared. Or in the late-night aftermath of Sloane’s party, his mouth kiss-swollen and red.

 

But not after that.

 

And certainly not after the cave.

 

“I can’t stay for long,” Ryder says, softening his voice like it’ll somehow soften the truth of it, too. “But I just-- I’m just glad-- God, it’s…it’s so good to see you.”

 

The salarian merchant coughs from behind the counter, looking thoroughly disgusted. “Excuse me, Vidal, are you buying? Or will you do me the courtesy of continuing your human advances elsewhere?”

 

Ryder goes pink around the ears. “Fifty-five,” Reyes replies, feeling warm in the face himself, “they’ll go rot in another week, you need to sell.”

 

“Not for that cheap, I don’t. Seventy.”

 

“Sixty.”

 

“Sixty-five, or no sale.”

 

“Shit,” says Reyes, under his breath.

 

He buys three.

 

They split one between the two of them on the hitched shuttle-ride back to Tartarus, sitting with their legs dangling off the edge, thighs pressed together. The paripo skin is spiky, clay-orange and tougher than he’d expected-- but they manage to dig through it with the little knife in his back pocket, and the fruit inside is soft, and deliciously sweet.

 

“I can’t believe you remembered,” says Ryder around a mouthful, looking radiantly happy with juice dribbling to his chin. “I only mentioned them once, and Aya exports are limited as hell...how are they already selling them on Kadara?”

 

“They’re not,” says Reyes, concentrating on carving out another piece. “But I mentioned it to Keema, and she managed to pull some strings. We had to keep it discreet, market back-channels-- what?”

 

Ryder is staring at him, eyes wide. “You broke an Ayan treaty--”

 

“Technically, _I_ didn’t do the breaking--”

 

“--smuggling paripo across planetary lines--”

 

“I didn’t do the smuggling, either.”

 

 _“Reyes,”_ says Ryder, his hand settling over Reyes’ knee, and softer: “For me?”

 

Reyes grins, looking out at the pinkened water-colored sky, and eats the fruit off the tip of his knife.

 

The old engines creak and hiss as they hover over the slums. Reyes hops off the shuttle first, boots hitting the ground hard; Ryder follows close behind, the remaining two fruits tucked close to his chest, precious cargo. Across the open yard Tartarus stands shackled and quiet. “Bar’s closed,” says Ryder. “Too early to buy you a drink, I guess.”

 

But there’ll be time for that later. As long as Ryder sticks around, or at least as long as he doesn’t find a good enough reason not to. For now Reyes’ brain is stuck on the repeating image of his palm, warm and steady on his thigh. “Plenty of things to do in the meantime,” he replies, reaching to steady himself at the small of Ryder’s back, thumbing down the notches of his spine.

 

“Let me guess," Ryder says. "There’s an empty storage room around the corner.”

 

There’s a warmth in his voice that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Reyes feels it prickle at the back of his neck, his fingers finding purchase in the thin fabric of Ryder’s shirt, holding him fast. Quick confessions and adrenaline-shot trysts, separation by atmospheres and stars between systems--

 

Ryder has never expected anything more from him.

 

“It’s better than a storage room,” Reyes answers, and takes his hand. “I promise.”

 

…

 

They don’t have to go far. He’s worked out a nice arrangement with Kian, staying in one of the upper flats above the club; he’s even paying rent, it’s all very responsible. And Keema’s wired up some extra security measures, so considering what passes for safe on Kadara, it’s safe enough.

 

Still--

 

When the door to his flat hisses open, he feels the swell of nerves in the quickening of his heart.

 

He knows his world is one painfully separate from his Pathfinder’s. It isn’t a fact he’s likely to forget. He still remembers the soft cots of the Nexus, the well-lit corridors and reflective panels; here there are only broken tiles and unwashed walls-- and Ryder, standing in the center of it all. Setting down the fruits on the counter along the wall, gazing around the room, taking his sweet time. Running a hand along the top of the poorly-stuffed couch, touching the crummy Ascension model on the side-table with the gentle tip of a finger.

 

He pauses at the window, one hand pushing up the half-shuttered blinds. Staring out past the slum-yard to where the mountains frame the sky, unguarded, and Reyes stops, and looks at him.

 

Really looks at him.

 

The uniform is new. Or maybe just cleaner, and pressed. Someone’s given him a haircut, swept away the stray hairs that had grown out to the nape of his neck; he’s sunburned there, and around his ears. There are new, light freckles, scattered faintly over the bridge of his nose. Where had he run off to-- Reyes tries to remember-- Eos? Elaaden?

 

He looks good. Just as beautifully out-of-place as he’d looked the first time he’d seen him, big heart and blue eyes, fidgeting against the bar counter. But he looks tired, too, and there’s a weight that Reyes doesn’t recognize in the stiffness of his spine, the curve of his shoulders. He wonders what’s happened in the time that’s passed, since he was last planetside. He wonders how many tough calls he’s made, blasting off across the galaxy without him. How many times he’s cut it closer than Reyes cares to imagine, shields down, a shot away from an empty clip.

 

He hasn’t kissed him in a month and a half.

 

And the absence of it, of him, so close again-- it's like a physical ache, straining behind his ribs, deep in the center of his chest. He closes the distance between them until he can get a hand on Ryder’s waist, thumb rubbing at his hip, hooking fingers through his belt-loop, “What does the Pathfinder think?” he asks, low and close. “Hole-in-the-wall, yes? It suits me.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s-- nice.” Ryder turns into him, shoulder-to-chest. He’s taller by a small stretch of inches, just enough that Reyes has to tilt his chin up to meet his eyes: serious, softened in the back-light. Conflicted, sometimes in a way Reyes is afraid to understand, to name. “Very spartan.”

 

One month, two weeks.

 

And he still hasn’t kissed him.

 

Ryder swallows, like maybe he’s thinking the same thing. “You, uh…you like living here?”

 

“I like it enough. It’s out of the way, at the very least, and private. No one to bother me-- unless I ask them to, of course.”

 

“It sounds lonely.”

 

“It’s not so bad,” Reyes answers, letting his fingers slip up beneath Ryder’s shirt, ghosting over his skin in little light circles, hoping to feel him shiver. “And believe it or not, the walls are almost soundproof--”

 

“I’m…not really talking about the room, Reyes.”

 

Reyes blinks, startled; Ryder looks back, open, painful honesty.

 

“Why haven’t I heard from you?” he asks.

 

The fruit as an apology, as a peace offering-- _too obvious,_ Reyes thinks. He should have waited. Or sent it ahead to the Tempest, or been honest, from the start.

 

Of course it’s already far too late for that, with Ryder.

 

He knows he’s an open book. He has always been far too easy to read, too transparent; why else would he stick to the shadows? Better to cover everything up, to fit a mask over what he can’t seem to mask for himself-- but Kadaran mornings are too bright to hope to hide anything. Especially not out in the open like this, Ryder’s hair amber-lit in the grimy, yellowed halo of the window, Reyes’ hands still around his waist.

 

“Just…don’t say you’ve been busy,” says Ryder. “Because I’ve got kind of a tough job, too, so that one might not work on me--”

 

“You said you needed space.”

 

“I meant _distance,_ Reyes, time apart, that’s all.”

 

“I used you,” Reyes says, the words sour, and wrong in his mouth. They’ve been over this part before, and more than once. In the days after the cave the tension had been so thick between them that Reyes could hardly look at him without feeling like he was drowning, water closing high over his head. “I put blood on your hands, you’re still afraid I’ll do it again--”

 

“That isn’t true.”

 

“But you’re afraid you don’t really know me, you can’t deny that--”

 

“I want to! If you’d just give me--”

 

“A reason?”

 

“A chance,” says Ryder, frustrated, “I was going to say, a _chance._ It’s been well over a month, Reyes. Why didn’t you write, or call--”

 

“Why didn’t you?” Reyes answers.

 

It isn’t what he should say. Or even what he means to say: _I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. I wasn’t sure you’d want me._

 

_You scrapped your messages. I scrapped mine._

 

Ryder looks away.

 

Reyes puts one hand out, between their chests. Steps in close, watches his eyes shift away, and then to his mouth, and then back up again.

 

And he isn’t sure which one of them reaches out first but then the space between them is gone; they’re kissing, and Ryder is cradling his face in both hands, and _yes, God yes, this--_ the press of his body, tasting the fruit on his lips, his tongue, worth all the weeks of waiting. Worth every unsent message weighing down his drafts, galaxies better than anything they could have said aloud.

 

They’re better at this than at talking-- but sometimes it still feels like conversation, like argument. Ryder, taking everything Reyes will give, trying to give too much in return; Reyes, pushing until Ryder melts. Pushing until the backs of Ryder’s knees hit the cheap mattress shoved against the wall, until Ryder is scrambling back onto the bed, frame creaking under his weight, breathing fast, pants already tight across the front.

 

“How long are you here for?” Reyes demands, following him down, fumbling with his belt. Ryder is laughing, shaking with the relief, hiding his smile in the crook of Reyes’ neck-- the belt comes free at last and Reyes tosses it down victorious, one hand sliding up from Ryder’s knee to palm him through the fabric. “Scott,” he says, taking his ear between his teeth, and tugging. “Did you hear me, how long are you--”

 

“Two,” gasps Ryder, rolling his hips against Reyes’ hand, straining to kiss him, “two days-- c’mere, Reyes, don’t _tease--”_

 

“Three nights?”

 

“One.”

 

He curses under his breath, slipping his fingers down Ryder's briefs to cup his cock in his palm; Ryder makes a helpless sound in return, arms winding around his neck, legs falling open to fit Reyes between them. Knees against his hips. Lips against his throat.

 

They fuck slowly. Until the sun hits its high and paints the walls of his room gold, until his skin is an inch slick with sweat and Scott is whimpering, pliant, spread out on the mattress, hair unruly and dark against the pillow. Only a month and a half but Reyes feels as though it’s been forever, feels like it’s their first time all over again, feels the dig of Scott’s fingers against his back and Scott’s breath rough and hot against his collarbones. Scott letting him pry everything loose, Scott’s hands in his hair, at the nape of his neck. Scott pleading to be touched. Saying _please, touch me,_ and coming over Reyes’ fist. Groaning into his neck, making those desperate, muffled sounds. Kissing his temple, biting his ear. Not letting go.

 

“You’re so good,” says Reyes, slurring a little. He hooks his knee over Scott’s waist, buries his nose in the crook of his shoulder, blissed out and sort of delirious. “So good,” he says again, feeling it close up in his throat, meaning _don’t go, don’t go._ Meaning _stay here_ and _trust me. Trust me._

 

He can’t keep doing this. Holding out until he breaks, counting the days until he’s planetside, again. Fighting and fucking and sitting out on the rooftop after dark, Ryder in Reyes’ lap, smiling softly at something he’s said. Unfamiliar stars scattered above them. Muffled club music below. A bottle passed in between, knuckles bumping, brushing, kissing, clumsy.

 

Ryder will leave in the morning.

 

For half a heartbeat, Reyes will wonder whether he was ever there at all.

 

They can’t possibly last like this; they can’t possibly do this for any longer-- for a moment, he doesn’t think he could bear it.

 

But then the moment passes, and he knows he couldn’t bear to have anything else.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge thank you to [riley](https://reyescott.tumblr.com/) for looking this mess over for me!!


	2. Chapter 2

Nexus vid-files have always been confoundedly difficult to access. Reyes has a few remaining Collective contacts on the inside, but they’re still working on a subtle, fool-proof way to move data caches across scourge-heavy clusters. More often than not, good chunks of the data that used to come in were corrupted. Sometimes the wrong data was transmitted entirely. And even after he got his hands on the files, the additional layers of encryption came so thick that it would leave him wondering whether wiring an AI up to your brain was really such a bad idea, after all.

 

But the last time the Tempest had landed in Kadara Port, someone-- specifically someone with Initiative armor and a truck that handles like an M35 Mako-- had stuck a shiny new HNS transmitter in the clay-orange crags just outside of the slums.

 

And now--

 

On the vid-screen in his room Ryder is breathless, the tip of his nose reddened from sunburn, his hair sweat-stuck to his forehead. _“We have another home,”_ he says, eyes sliding from the reporter’s camera lens to the baby-blue sky above. The asari squadmate at his side is practically bouncing on her feet, a heavy-looking piece of remnant tech cradled in her arms. _“It’s not tame by any means, but it’s bringing the dream back-- New Tuchanka!”_

 

The asari tugs at his arm-- _“Come on, Ryder!”--_ and the Pathfinder gives a little half-salute as he’s dragged off, bright-eyed and grinning. “Pause,” says Reyes, before the camera can begin to swivel away. The screen freezes on Ryder’s smile.

 

Playing politician, playing foot-solider, diplomat-- he forgets, sometimes, how young Ryder is. Twenty-two and still rooted firm in the belief that he can save everyone. That everyone should be saved, deserves to be saved.

 

It’s the kind of man he’s always been. That specific Alliance Milky Way breed, _yes sirs_ and _no sirs_ and dropping everything for anyone who asked. A stumbling almost-hero out of his element, all boy scout manners and off-duty Nexus threads. Reyes remembers meeting him for the first time, remembers how close he’d let him press, shoulder-to-shoulder. And he remembers the hard set of his jaw when he’d mentioned Sloane, _dress it up however you want._ _She’s a criminal._

 

From the beginning, it had been a bad idea. Someone like Reyes taking up with someone like Ryder-- toying with a Pathfinder in any regard was ill-advised, especially for an exile. Especially for an exile with a web of secrets that stretched faster than he could spin it. But despite it all, despite everything...Reyes had found it extremely difficult to leave Ryder alone.

 

The flirting in its prime had been very fun, and seemed incredibly harmless; there wasn’t a chance in hell that Ryder would ever actually be interested, anyway, or so Reyes had thought. Not with his white knight heart, and his head halfway in the clouds. Driven by morals, never by credits, the kind of person who talked about his dreams like they were within reach, who was good for the promises he made, but sometimes--

 

_Sometimes,_ Reyes would think, reading his emails, watching his throat bob, knocking back whiskey. Sleepless in the middle of sticky-hot Kadaran nights, his hand between his legs and Scott’s name between his teeth; slumped over a Tartarus barstool with a lukewarm drink on an empty stomach, _sometimes_ , Reyes had said to Keema, _the way he looks at me._

 

Like he was seeing someone different, someone else. Someone Reyes thinks he might have been, years ago. When hope was an idea that still meant something, when he still tried to do the right thing, for the right reasons.

 

_Reyes is a better man than you think--_

 

Like he believed that.

 

_Do yourself a favor, Reyes,_ Keema had said. _Prove him wrong, before he finds out for himself._

 

…

 

**TERMINAL: REYES VIDAL**

  

**Good To See You**

> Maybe next time you could plan to stay a little longer. Does the Initiative ever give its Pathfinders proper shore leave? I’d be happy to file a complaint with Tann if need be
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**Great To See You**

> You know I’m usually good with words, among other things,
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**Just Checking In**

> Did you mean to leave your jacket here? Should I send it ahead to the Nexus? Do you want me to hold on to it?
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

…

 

“Do you ever wonder if we could do things differently?” Reyes asks Keema, popping the cap off a beer in the backroom of the club, Collective reports scattered over the table between them. They meet once a week to work together like this, side by side, tossing up scenarios and doing their best to throw off the scent of Charlatan hunters who’ve been digging too deep.

 

Keema waits until he’s taken a drink before she holds out her hand to ask for a sip of her own-- he isn’t exactly sure what human alcohol does to angara, but she seems to like it well enough. “Differently how?” she asks after she’s swallowed, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, and passing back the bottle.

 

“Less illegal imports. Over the table deals, fair fights.”

 

“In an ideal world?”

 

He shrugs, noncommittal. “Or in this one.”

 

“We aren’t the Initiative,” Keema says, coolly.

 

“That’s not what I’m--”

 

“We aren’t Outcasts, either.” She looks at him, big inky eyes unblinking. “What’s the matter with you? Kadara doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”

 

Reyes brings the bottle to his lips. He wonders if Ryder would see that as an excuse. Or if Ryder would stand for this kind of talk at all. Maybe he’d look at him the way Reyes doesn’t understand, the way he’d looked in the shadows of the cave, pale-faced and sickened. Half-heartbroken, and lying through his teeth if only to keep Reyes from walking away, _nothing’s changed._

 

“You aren’t here to save the galaxy,” says Keema, like she knows what he’s thinking. “Leave that to someone who still believes they can, Reyes.”

 

…

 

**TERMINAL: REYES VIDAL**

                                                                                                                              

**Still Alive Out There?**

> Kadara is running out of kett to kill-- save a few more for me, if there’s ever a next time
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**Thinking Of You**

> I went back to our rooftop the other night. It wasn’t the same without
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**I’m Sure You’re Busy...**

> But let me know if you ever have a spare minute. Maybe we could find the time for a vidcall, or
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

…

 

Another week goes by, without a word from him.

 

Reyes hadn't exactly expected anything, not really. Not from someone who’s been saddled with 20,000 sleepers and the threat of angaran annihilation. Not from someone who probably still isn’t sure he’s allied himself with the right man, either-- but the silence settles heavy, all the same.

 

The showerhead in the bathroom needs a replacement and the water comes out cold, since he’s waiting on the parts to fix the heater. Reyes stands there for a solid twenty minutes anyway, the spray against his back, his forehead to the wall, an icy pool collecting at his feet until his toes have gone numb.

 

He’s going to do what he always does, he decides, tilting his head up and feeling the water wash through his hair. He’s going to stop staring at his data pad and do some fieldwork, instead. He’ll get his gun and meet up with Crux for a patrol. He’ll stop drafting near-confessionals, and waiting on messages that Ryder might never send--

 

From outside of the closed bathroom door, he hears the _ping_ of his inbox.

 

_One new email._

 

Without thinking he scrambles to twist off the taps, wet fingers slipping on the cool metal. Brain short-circuiting, wrapping a towel around his waist and skidding out to the datapad tossed on his bed:

 

_We haven’t discussed what you plan to do with Kaetus since the night of the coup--_

 

“Fuck,” he mutters, half-naked and shivering in the middle of his flat.

 

_\--and quite a few members of the Collective have expressed interest in selecting an execution date. He needs to be dealt with. Has he given you any worthwhile intel?_

 

_\- Keema_

 

_No,_ Reyes writes back, resigned, _but I’ll try again._ _If I can sway him, he could give us a huge advantage in port trade._

 

Her answer, almost instantaneous: _And if you can’t?_

 

Sometimes he wonders if she remembers who’s really in charge.

 

He takes the route down to the holding cells with a fair share of apprehension. He’s visited Kaetus twice before, and both times he’d come away with next to nothing. The turian has talked only to rub Ryder’s name into the mud; the rest of his energy has been wasted on blank stares and one-word answers, grunts. And it isn’t that Reyes doesn’t want to go through with the execution-- it couldn’t matter less to him-- he’s simply wary of acting too soon, of making the call without realizing that he’s missed something. Imprisoning the Outcast’s next-best underneath their base of operations is a risky, part-time solution to an eventual problem. To kill Kaetus or keep him-- whatever information he’ll give is what will determine his worth.

 

Reyes had given the Collective strict orders to keep the turian alive and unharmed. But even as the Charlatan, there’s only so much he can do with the influence he has, and it shows: his prisoner is curled on the cell floor when he walks in, his chest rising and falling weakly in weak bursts. There’s green blood wetting the sharp lines of his mouth, and around the flat ridges of his nose; the smell is rancid, alien waste and the contents of his stomach spilled across the cell floor.

 

He stirs slightly as Reyes hits the lock and steps inside. His eyes look lifeless, cracked open, black and dull, focusing slowly. “Vidal,” he says at last, claws curling faintly at his sides. His voice is raspy with disuse, the sound coming up raw through the hard plates of his throat. “Here to finish me off?”

 

Reyes chuckles. “If I’m going to be honest, it doesn’t look like you need much help.”

 

“Gloat all you want, human. I won’t be here much longer.”

 

“Planning a prison break?”

 

It’s Kaetus’s turn to laugh, though it’s humorless, and strained. He manages to drag himself up to a sitting position, sagging heavily against the wall. “The guards say the Charlatan wants me dead. If that’s true, I’m varren meat already.”

 

“What would prison guards know about the Charlatan?”

 

“What would _you_?”

 

There’s always a bit of a thrill in playing this card. In pretending to be a free agent, someone without skin in the game or credits on the table--

 

But maybe he needs to approach this another way.

 

“I know more than you think I do,” he offers, dropping his voice low. “And if you work with me, I can get you out of this. A life sentence under guard, but better living. Medi-gel, untainted dextro-protein, a real bed--”

 

“Fuck you,” says Kaetus, hollowly.

 

“What do you have to lose?”

 

“When you go back on your word? Whatever I have left. Outcast honor, dignity--”

 

He’s lying in a pool of his own vomit. Reyes lifts an eyebrow, pointedly.

 

“You think you’re so clever,” Kaetus snaps, “don’t you, offering me everything you think I want. I don’t give a damn. The Collective killed the only woman who could save this place, and nothing I do will change what they did to her, what Ryder stood by and let them do to her--”

 

“Kaetus,” Reyes warns. “He wasn’t a part of it.”

 

“Yeah, did he tell you that?” His beady eyes are burning, fevered and hot. “I don’t know everything that happened, Vidal, but I know enough. Your Pathfinder is lucky I’ll die here, or I’d rip out his _spine--”_

 

But that wouldn’t change anything, either, and they both know it.

 

And Kaetus doesn’t want to die, not really. It’s there in the strain of his voice, struggling against the noose of his own pride. No matter what he claims, even with nothing left to live for, self-preservation is a wicked little thing.

 

Reyes should know.

 

“Fuck you,” Kaetus repeats at last, weakly now and almost delirious, a fresh thin coat of blood trickling from the flat slots of his nose. “You don’t get it, nobody does, Sloane and I, she-- she didn’t need anyone else, you understand? All she needed was me, and I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there and she needed...”

 

His chest heaves in rapid, shallow breaths, rattling when he coughs. He turns his head and stares up at the square of pale light, filtering through the cell’s slit of a window.

 

“Let me think about it,” he says.

 

...

  

**TERMINAL: REYES VIDAL**

 

**Kadara Port Update**

> Ditaeon’s development is on schedule, and Outcast activity is at an all-time low. Sometimes it’s almost peaceful here, without you to stir things up. Why don’t you head back my way to see what sort of trouble we can
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**Regarding Kaetus**  

> I know we agreed not to talk about work, but I could use you on this
> 
> [DRAFT DELETED]

 

**Thanks For Stopping By**

> Just let me know when you’ll be back in the neighborhood, Ryder. I’ll save you a seat at the bar.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Reyes
> 
> [MESSAGE SENT]

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the hiatus! not sure if i like this chapter but fuck it, i'm posting

The sixth time the Tempest lands outside of Kadara Port, Reyes has long-since learned to start filing things away.

 

What Ryder looks like just before and after a kiss. What he looks like framed in the muted light of Kadaran sunsets, long shadows and his silhouette on the other side of the mattress. Soft pale eyes, bullet-shaped bruises; all sore shoulders and joints, too young to ache so badly. Armor and undershirts dropped, scattered. Scott’s back on the bedspread, briefs shoved down around his knees. Legs spread to keep Reyes between them, above him, inside of him, the curve of his mouth slack and open, just a little. Trembling, but just a little.

 

Cold desert nights and wriggling closer to Ryder to get warm. Keeping him close to his chest, careful not to take it for granted. Feeling Ryder sling one arm over his waist, murmuring something unintelligible into his hair, falling asleep to the rise of dust-storms outside his window, the distant yips of adhi...

 

Sometimes Reyes dreams of nights that have already passed them by. Sometimes he dreams of the life he’s left, abandoned in a galaxy six-hundred years behind him. Rooftops, and the drunk, happy echoes of the party below; the feel of flight controls under his hands, callsigns hissing in his comm.

 

Tonight he dreams of the sniper, sights switched from Sloane’s heart to his own.

 

He dreams of the incendiary round cutting through his spine and of Sloane’s boot, grinding his face into the dirt. He dreams of the bullet cutting through him, and then cutting through Ryder. Sloane turning on Ryder, Ryder turning on Reyes; Ryder stepping in front of Sloane, and taking the shot himself. White knight. Big heart, blue eyes, and blood, red, bubbling and bursting between Ryder’s lips, puddling in his hands, dripping to the cave floor--

 

_Bang._

 

He wakes feverish in the night air, sweat drenched and shaking. Dry, aching noises are burning in the pit of his chest but Ryder is there with one hand on his cheek, waiting for the terror to ebb and fade.

 

“Hey,” he whispers. “Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay--”

 

Reyes says his name. Or tries to, his heart beating hard against his ribs, stopping up his throat.

 

Ryder pushes fingers through his hair, combing it back from his forehead. “You were just dreaming,” he says. “It was only a dream, Reyes.”

 

Reyes kisses him, wordlessly-- then kisses him again, until he feels real. Until he’s grasping at the back of Reyes’ neck, and Reyes is breathing deep, breathing easy against him.

 

And they won’t talk about it later. The same way they won’t talk about how they’d left Sloane’s body for the wraiths, or what the hell it is that they’re doing, orbiting each other, constantly waiting to collide. Separating the man in his bed from the man under all that armor. Peeling away the Charlatan from the pieces of himself he still has left. Saviors meeting sinners halfway, and leaving titles at the door.

 

What they don’t say can’t be held against them, he thinks.

 

He’s lied by omission so many times that it hardly feels like lying at all.

 

...

 

In the pale reaches of the morning he wakes up with Scott still wrapped around him, his cheek pressed against his chest. The blankets have been mostly shoved off, twisted up over their thighs; their legs are tangled under the sheets. The blinds are half-closed, squared-strips of honeyed light lining the floor.

 

It’s only in these sluggish early hours that it happens: the dry-cracked desert outside his apartment walls melting into something surreal, far-fetched. When Ryder’s in his bed, half-naked and sound asleep, it’s easy for Reyes to let his guard down, to let himself really dream. To let his brain go slow and stupid, wishing he could have this for one more day. Wishing he could keep him. Imagining a world where he wouldn’t have to wish at all, a world where the only war that matters is the war Reyes has already won.

 

In a world like that, maybe Ryder could stick around.

 

In any case-- they have a few hours more before he belongs to the Initiative again. So Reyes drifts back into a frantic sort of sleep, struggling against what he knows is temporary, fighting the familiar feeling of letting go--

 

It hardly feels like he’s closed his eyes before his omni-tool startles him awake again, insistent and blaring in the quiet lull of the room.

 

He fumbles for the mute, grinding the heel of one hand into his blurry eyes as he scrambles up, squinting at the identification of the call: it’s the frequency Keema uses for him.

 

_This early?_

 

On the other side of the bed Ryder is stirring, too, blinking up at him in a dazed sort of stupor. “Reyes?” he murmurs, his voice small, and thick with sleep.

 

 _“Reyes,”_ echoes Keema, on the other end of the line, _“it’s Kaetus. He’s agreed to talk, he wants to see you.”_

 

“What--” Reyes fights off a yawn, irked. “Now?!”

 

There’s something of a smile in her voice, sounding smug. _“I might’ve instructed the guards give him some extra encouragement, overnight. You were taking too long.”_

 

 _Shit._ He can feel Ryder’s eyes on the back of his head. He doesn’t need to check to know the look that’s on his face. “Give me thirty minutes, I’m on my way. And get Nakamoto down there, damn it, he’s no use to me if you let him bleed out--”

 

_“Consider it done.”_

 

The call drops. Reyes swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, searching blindly for the shirt he’d tossed to the floor the night before. “Go back to sleep, Scott.”

 

But Ryder is on his feet. “I’ll come with you.”

 

“It’s four in the morning--”

 

“I’m up, Reyes, I might as well.”

 

Reyes turns back to him, fumbling with the clasps of his belt. “Seeing you will only aggravate him. He has no idea that I was involved, he already blames you for everything--”

 

“Then I’ll stay outside the door! I’ll keep out of sight, I promise, I won’t say a word--”

 

“You can’t help with this,” says Reyes, perhaps a bit more forcefully than he needs to. “Please, Scott, just-- trust me?”

 

Ryder pauses, mouth half-open, close to fighting him. Reyes can guess what he’s biting back. _I want to be there, I want to help. I could help if you’d let me--_

 

_Don’t kill him. Tell me you won’t kill him._

 

He stands there listless, and watches as Reyes crosses the room to him, his shirt rumpled, still barefoot. He lets Reyes tug his chin down, between his thumb and forefinger; he lets Reyes kiss him, light and close-mouthed, half a promise he’s not sure he’s at liberty to make.

 

“Trust me,” Reyes repeats, linking their fingers together, squeezing. But it’s harder to get the words out, this time, close enough to feel the slumped defeat in the wire of his body, close enough to see the flicker behind his eyes, uncertain, almost afraid.

 

“You know I do,” Ryder answers, softly, and lets go of his hand.

 

...

 

Reyes sets down his shuttle at the port’s landing platform, the sun peeking into the blackish sky above the mountain peaks. Nakamoto is already crouching over Kaetus’s body by the time he makes it down to the cells, his scanner out and humming, a med-kit within arms reach. He’s helping Kaetus onto his side, the prison cot groaning under his weight; he’s talking him through it, murmuring low, under his breath.

 

There’s more blood on the floor than Reyes had expected.

 

He clears his throat as he comes in and the doctor looks up, blinking. “Keema asked for me,” he offers. “How is he?”

 

“Fractures down his left arm,” Nakamoto replies, curt and clipped, looking to his patient again and closing the scanner. “Some internal bruising, he’s having trouble breathing-- and there’ll be major scarring where the lacerations are deepest. If I’d been contacted earlier--”

 

“He doesn’t need to look pretty,” comes Keema’s voice, lilting and smooth from behind them; Reyes startles, turning to find her watching them, her back against the far wall. “As long as he can form words, you’ve done your job.”

 

Nakamoto doesn’t look pleased. But if there’s something more on his mind, he’s smart enough not to voice it. He didn’t survive Sloane through luck alone-- it’s hardly pure luck that he’s stayed relevant now, either. Sweeping the supplies he’s scattered back into the medi-kit, he stands, still stiff. “I’ve done all I can for him. Contact me again if his condition worsens before tomorrow.”

 

Reyes murmurs his thanks as he passes. There’s an exchange of credits from Keema’s omni-tool to his, then he’s gone, the door’s hydraulics wheezing in his wake, leaving Keema trailing behind him, following suit.

 

She pauses in the doorway. She looks to Reyes, nods to Kaetus, wordless.

 

And then they’re alone.

 

The turian’s breathing is the loudest thing in the room. There’s a faint whistle in each inhale, with the medi-gel patches glued over his ribs slowly working their magic. His eyes are open, albeit clouded, watching Reyes from outside of the cell.

 

“Can you hear me?” Reyes asks.

 

“Yes,” says Kaetus, faintly.

 

“You called me here.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And you’re willing to talk?” he prompts, folding his arms tight across his chest.

 

“That--” Kaetus breathes deep, chest rattling, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. “Depends."

 

“On what?”

 

“You. Your-- the bargain...we made. You said--”

 

“I’ll honor it.”

 

“Honor--” Kaetus makes a sound, raspy, not quiet a laugh, almost a cough. The claws in his fractured arm curl inward, a loose fist at the end of the white-bandaged sling. “Dohrgun will...allow this?”

 

“Keema and I have an understanding,” Reyes answers, determined to keep him talking. “You’ll be as safe as I can make you, Kaetus, you’ll have my protection.”

 

The turian hesitates, briefly.

 

Then he takes another long, unsteady breath, and nods.

 

“Ask me,” he whispers. “Whatever you want to know.”

 

...

 

He talks for a good half hour. Spilling out safe combinations, details of trade circles and Outcast connections in back-channel trade. Factions regrouping on other worlds. Factions rebuilding in safe-houses hidden deep within Kadaran caves. And Reyes records it all, his omni-tool held out to catch every word.

 

It exhausts the turian, visibly. Whether it’s the beating he’d taken or the knowledge that he’s leading the rest of his people to their slaughter, Reyes can’t be sure-- but he shows no sign of stopping until Reyes lifts a hand, and cuts him off.

 

“We’ll pick this up another time,” he tells him, saving the data to an eyes-only file. “You’ve made yourself invaluable, Kaetus, I’ll have you moved to better quarters as soon as I’m able.”

 

There’s unmistakable relief in Kaetus’s eyes, guilt hanging heavy and close behind it. He goes limp as Reyes stands, and doesn’t speak again; when Reyes chances to glance back, he’s turned away, scaled knees hugged to his chest.

 

Keema is waiting for him outside. They don’t take the stairs up to the throne room, she doesn’t let him get that far. In the empty close-quartered hallway she catches his arm, close on his heels, and forces him to face her. “Reyes,” she says, voice flat. “What did you promise him?”

 

It’s never a good idea to lie to an angara. It’s most definitely a bad idea to lie to Keema, in particular; he's trying not to lie these days anyway, although the key word so far has been  _trying_. “I’m putting him under house arrest,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “Meals three times a day, no beatings as long as he continues to comply.”

 

 _“Skutting--”_ Her eyes flash, wearing her indignation plain. “This is getting out of hand! There’s nothing he can give you that we can’t find out for ourselves--”

 

“We can’t be certain of that, Keema--”

 

“You know it’s true!”

 

“Listen to me,” says Reyes, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Back in the Milky Way, there was an asari who ran a spaceport. Black-market, gang-turf, similar to Kadara in more than a few ways--”

 

“Your point is?”

 

“Sometimes instead of killing her enemies she would-- keep them around. Like trophies, proof that she’d won.”

 

“I’m not sure I find that preferable, honestly.”

 

“This--” Reyes grits his teeth, letting out a sharp breath. “This can work, Keema. It’s going to work. Yes, it’s a risk to keep him, but so was the duel--”

 

“The duel was a necessity. This is playing with fire. You know what he's capable of, what his people did to this place--”

 

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” he snaps, angry with her for the first time in a long time. “I’m only thinking about what’s best for Kadara.”

 

Keema laughs. The sound is harsh, and almost humorless, but tinged with a dry sort of affection, “Reyes,” she says, at last. “You are a dear friend to me, I would trust you with my life-- but _sholaon,_ you cannot possibly pretend this has ever been about Kadara.”

 

The words hit like a gut-punch; still, for a moment, he doesn’t understand.

 

And then he does, and wishes he didn’t.

 

“Pull yourself together,” she adds, quieter, clasping him tightly by the shoulder. “The last thing this port needs is another hero.”

 

...

 

Ryder is asleep again, by the time he makes it back to the flat. But he’s a trigger-light sleeper, or at least has been since Reyes has known him, and he jerks awake when the door hisses open, rolling over onto his back, head popping up a little from the pillow.

 

“Morning,” he mumbles, muffled. “It’s...still morning, right?”

 

“Almost 0600.”

 

Ryder groans, softly. Then stretches out, joints cracking lightly when he arches his back, “C’mere,” he says, blinking up at him with sleepy, begging eyes. “C’mon, what're you doing way over there--?”

 

Reyes doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

He kicks off his boots, crawling forward onto the mattress, running still-gloved hands through Ryder’s bedhead hair. Ryder makes a soft, needy sound in return, untangling from the blankets to pull him closer. The countdown in Reyes’ head is ticking again: thirty-four minutes, forty if they push it-- he buries his face in Ryder’s neck, and they both ignore the requests that have already started blocking up Ryder’s omni-tool. Breathing easy, together. Heartbeat to heartbeat.

 

He thinks about the last time he’d let anybody this close, the way it had ended: Zia’s body, buried somewhere past Haarfel in a grave unmarked and shallow. He thinks about empty eyes. Thinks about sniper sights.

 

Sometimes, he thinks, he’s still waiting for Ryder to face him down the barrel of a gun.

 

He lets his free hand wander under blankets to find Scott’s bare thigh, running the flat of his palm over the angle of his hip, the smooth curve of his back. Scott’s blood pulses in his throat, against his breastbone; Reyes counts the beats in silence, trying to make it last, always trying to make it last.

 

He doesn’t tell him about Kaetus, about Keema.

 

Ryder doesn’t ask, doesn’t even try.

 

Reluctantly, finally: 

 

“I’d better get going,” Scott says.

 

So they get out of bed. And Reyes makes coffee, and Scott dresses with his back to him. And neither of them seem to know what they’re supposed to say, after that-- if they’re supposed to kiss good-bye the way they do, slow and sort of desperate before Ryder walks out the door. Or if Reyes is supposed to watch from the Tartarus balcony the way he does, when the Tempest engines flare up and simmer down and cut an eezo trail out of Kadara Port, out of the mountain chain, into the atmosphere.

 

Everything, starting all over again. Ryder leaves, and Reyes waits. Ryder comes back, but never for long, and Reyes waits, and keeps waiting.

 

 _“He knows you can’t go with him,”_ says Keema, when Reyes drunk-dials her later, halfway through the rest of the whiskey. _“You wouldn’t leave, even if he asked you to.”_

 

But he wants to, sometimes; sometimes, he wants him to.

 

 _“What else do you expect him to do?”_ she says. _“It isn’t as if he can stay.”_

 


	4. Chapter 4

There are really only two kinds of weather, on Kadara. There’s something akin to desert mountain summers-- icy morning air, afternoons hot enough to parch, light-drizzled sweeping rains. And then there’s the dry, scorching heat of everything else.

 

It’s the latter, now, and has been for days. Tartarus has become a sweltering pit of a sauna; Reyes flees his apartment above the club and takes shelter in the shade of the Collective caves as often as he can, using his work on adhi domestication as an excuse. Above ground the sweat sticks constantly to his skin and pools at the nape of his neck. The heat crawls into his temples and throbs. He’s perpetually thirsty, on edge, irritable.

 

And then, a week after the heat has kicked in and decided to stay, Reyes decides to move his operations to Ditaeon.

 

He isn’t exactly sure they’ll welcome him. He is, after all, still an exile, and apart from Ryder and his Tempest crew, he’s known to them only as a Kadaran smuggler, and Keema’s confidant. But he’s sweating through his briefs, and figures that he might as well try-- after all, the Initiative outpost is one of the only properties in the port with twenty-four hour exterior temperature-control and indoor air conditioning. And Reyes is more than willing to pay the price of a little hostility, for that kind of relief.

 

After the unbearable beatdown of the desert heat, the cooled climate feels like heaven, reminds him of plunging into the deep blue lakes he remembers from Earth. The Initiative scientists watch curiously from the windows when he slides out of his shuttle, and although the guards keep their hands on their holsters and their eyes on him, no one looks like they’re rearing to start a firefight.

 

But as it happens, before he even makes it up the first set of stairs:

 

“Vidal!” comes a booming voice behind him. “It’s about goddamn time!”

 

The man striding across the yard is barrel-chested and bearded, with a kindly, weathered sort of face. He grasps Reyes’ hand and shakes vigorously, eyes crinkled at the corners, “Christmas Tate,” he beams. “I’m whatever counts for leadership around here-- welcome to Ditaeon!”

 

Reyes feels like a rag-doll, held fast in the other man’s bear-like grip. Ryder has mentioned Tate before, albeit briefly; he’s seen his name in the Initiative transmissions that have filtered their way through his inbox, too. “I’d introduce myself,” he says, trying not to wince as Tate releases his hand at last. “But you seem to know me already.”

 

“Oh-ho! That I do.” Tate throws one arm around his shoulders, steering him toward the stairs at the far side of the building. “Our fearless leader gave extensive instructions to make you feel at home,” he adds, “if you ever showed up, that is.”

 

“Ryder-- mentioned me?”

 

It comes out clumsy, sort of stupid. Tate glances sideways at him, and his smile softens into something knowing. “The two of you are close, I take it.”

 

“He’s-- we--” Reyes clears his throat. “He's done more for me than anyone here deserves."

 

“Right, well. If that's how you want to put it.” Tate claps him heartily on the back as they reach the top of the balcony landing. The doors slide open automatically in front of them. “You’ll have the upstairs to yourself, to use for whatever you’d like. Need anything specific, just yell, someone will come by eventually.”

 

Reyes hardly has time to thank him before the hydraulics hiss shut again.

 

The room is low-lit, windows are floor-to-ceiling. Deep mountain shadows have spilled over the smooth tile, onto the back wall; after a brief moment the motion-sensors kick on, lights flickering to life overhead, sending him blinking fast as his eyes adjust--

 

And his heart picks up, double-time.

 

It’s Ryder’s room.

 

He knows it almost immediately, something twisting viciously in his chest. Stacks of Nexus-marked files, classified but outdated. Data pads scattered over desks and shelving units, an Alliance recruitment poster tacked to a cabinet door. He spots an extensive Blasto vid-collection, an old espresso machine, an actual paper-bound book titled _The Fifth Fleet: A History._ He almost trips over a shiny silver model of a Kodiak that’s been knocked to the floor, and sets it back up on its shelf, next to the little M35 Mako.

 

It's not what he would've expected. The place looks like a university student’s. All that’s missing is a Seattle Sorcerers holo, a fantasy biotiball chart. And if he didn’t know Ryder, the way he does--

 

It could be anybody’s room. Anywhere in the galaxy.

 

Something about this feels almost invasive, being here without him. But if Tate can be believed, it was offered by Ryder in the first place, and anyway, Reyes is greedy, and desperate.

 

And missing him, whether or not he would admit it aloud, so badly he can hardly breathe. 

 

 _Jog with Cora at 0500,_ says the months-old to-do list that’s been left lying on the one-walled kitchen counter, next to the expired boxed crackers and food paste. _Study remnant puzzle, Vidcon Kandros, finish journal entry._

 

_Ask Reyes about 'Charlatan'._

 

Reyes turns away, feeling like someone’s gripped his windpipe and squeezed, hard. It’s more than apparent that Ryder hasn’t stayed here for a long time-- there’s a fine lining of dust over the counters, the coffeemaker looks sadly neglected, with old dried grounds stuck to the sides. The bed has been made and untouched since: all hospital corners, white, clean blankets and plumped pillows.

 

And the sheets, he'll learn later, curled up on the mattress, don’t smell like him.

 

Just laundry soap, and fabricated linen, but he’ll sleep there that night all the same, datapad still in his hand, inbox open, always waiting.

 

And he’ll keep sleeping there, the night after, and the night after that.

 

And that’s where he'll be three days later, when Ryder calls him, without warning, at 0200.

 

...

 

He picks up half-blind, half-asleep. The glare of his omni-tool is like a supernova in the muted dark of the room, “What’s wrong,” he says at once, on red-alert, scrambling to sit up from where he’d been dozing, one arm around a pillow and his datapad propped up on his belly, “what's-- did something happen?”

 

_“...Reyes?”_

 

Ryder sounds-- almost surprised. For a second, blinking away the bright spots behind his eyes, Reyes wonders if he's mis-dialed. If he'd meant to tap into a Nexus frequency, and rang up Reyes by mistake. “You called me."

 

_“I know I did, I meant to-- nothing’s wrong, Reyes.”_

 

“Oh-- oh." Some of the tension leaves him, and he sags against the headboard. "Good. That's good."

 

 _“Sorry, this is my fault, it’s--”_  Ryder laughs a little, flustered, stumbling. _“It’s late for you, isn’t it? Or...early? Suvi-- she mentioned I’d have to factor in a time difference, but math isn’t really my strong suit...anyway. Sorry. Sun’s not down for us yet.”_

 

Reyes takes a slow breath that transforms halfway into a yawn, the rest of his panic ebbing. “It’s, mm. Just past one here. Remind me where you are?”

 

 _“Eladaan,”_ says Ryder, although he doesn’t seem pleased about it. _“It’s been-- a long day. I got stuck in a sinkhole this morning, so feel free to laugh at me about that. And Tann’s pissed as all hell about our truce with the krogan-- I half expected him to try to fire me over the vidcon.”_

 

“You know he’d never try, he’s spineless.”

 

_“Yeah. Lucky me.”_

 

There's an exhale, then, long and weary. Brimming with something-- something almost hollow, resigned, and it’s new; Reyes hasn’t heard him like this before. Not even in the aftermath of the cave. “Are you--?” he starts, not really knowing exactly how he plans to finish.

 

 _“I’m fine,”_ Ryder says quickly, sounding embarrassed now. _“Sorry, I just, I don’t know...like I said, it’s been a long day. I didn’t expect you to answer, I was just going to leave a message. Record something for you.”_

 

Reyes wishes he could see his face. Maybe then he could read the look in his eyes, the same way Ryder has always been able to read him-- but he pushes away the questions collecting on his tongue and reaches for the next best thing he can think of, voice smoothing out, teasing, “The dirty kind of recording, I hope.”

 

There’s a pause. For a second he feels like an idiot, cursing, silently, _tactless._

 

But then Ryder laughs, and the weariness that had been so palpable on the other end of the line shifts, like the slow rise of a curtain. His smile is still in his voice when he speaks, warm and undeniable. _“Nothing that exciting, sorry. I’m-- I don’t think I’d be very good at, um…that. Anyway.”_

 

“Giving up already?” says Reyes, egging him on in relief, chasing that familiar, awkward cadence that’s so distinctively _Scott._ “What kind of Pathfinder are you?”

 

_“Wow, that-- that sounds awfully close to a challenge.”_

 

“How do you know unless you try, Ryder?”

 

_“You need me to tell you how to touch yourself, Reyes?”_

 

He’s teasing, too, clearly.

 

But something about his voice, earnest and low, stirs up heat at the base of Reyes’ spine.

 

 _“Because I’d…”_ Ryder clears his throat. _“I mean. Sure. We could...try that. If you want. I’m just, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t know how to start, or--”_

 

“How would you touch me,” says Reyes, “if you were here right now?”

 

Another pause. The hiss of static, in quiet bursts.

 

 _“I’d undo your belt,”_ says Ryder, softly, and Reyes feels his breath waver, and catch.

 

He slides his hand down between his legs. Popping the buckle loose, slipping his palm under the waistband of his pants and thumbing across his briefs-- Initiative standard-issue, like nearly everything he owns. Everything he’d stolen from Nexus storage, before he’d erased himself from the Initiative’s narrative. Everything he has, or has but only sometimes, only over a comm, separated by planets, by the space between stars.

 

_“Are you--?”_

 

“Yes.”

 

 _“Fuck,”_ Ryder curses, breathless enough that Reyes’ cock twitches against his hand, thick and warm through the fabric, _“Fuck, okay, I’ve never...okay. I’d start-- start, uh-- slow. Over your briefs. Not too much pressure, you know, like...the way you always do to me.”_

 

He leans back against the headboard, relaxing the tightness in his shoulders. Rubbing himself gently, feeling out the shape between his fingers, grinding down in little gentle circles with the heel of his palm. Teasing enough to get himself hard, not enough to satisfy, _“Yeah,”_ says Ryder, like he can see him. _“Like that, just-- like that. Slow, right?”_

 

“Ryder--”

 

_“You gotta let go.”_

 

Reyes sucks in a hard breath through his nose and sort of groans, arching a little, remembering-- how Scott straddles him on the mattress of his bed, sometimes. Rocking against him, leaning into him. His hand curling around the back of Reyes’ neck, holding him there. Holding him. His palm on Reyes’ thigh. Between Reyes’ thighs, fingers wrapped around him, skin on skin, “Nn. Scott--”

 

_“Keep your hand-- over your briefs. Keep-- touching yourself, just, just like that--”_

 

It’s been a long time since he’s done this with someone. Even longer since he really even wanted to. But with his hand on his cock and Ryder on the other end of the line Reyes feels so awfully certain of this, of them, arousal hot as engine-fire, sparks and coils, burning white. Of Ryder’s breath hitching in his ear, voice pitched and wavering enough that Reyes knows he’s teasing himself, the very same way.

 

He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, in his head. He’s still rubbing himself through the fabric, pre-come damp at the front of his briefs; he has to bite his tongue to keep from begging. _“I’ve got you,”_ says Ryder-- so softly that Reyes thinks, for a wild moment, he can feel him, his breath against the shell of his ear. _“Wish I was there, I’d make you-- make you really wait for it, just a little more. A little longer, Reyes.”_

 

“You--”

 

_“Don’t come.”_

 

“Shit--” Reyes’ voice is hoarse. “Scott.”

 

 _“Yeah,”_ says Ryder, breathy. _“You can-- touch yourself, use your hand, but don’t come, not yet--”_

 

He pushes down his briefs, knees shaking. Takes his cock in his fist and pumps, the rhythm uneven, the glide rough and good, teasing down over the curve of his balls. Squeezing, eyes falling shut pretending it’s Ryder’s hand, Ryder in bed with him. Ryder’s fingers at his throat, at the head of his cock, thumbing over the slit.

 

“Scott,” he says, strained. He’s panting, hips rolling up against his palm, “Can I--”

 

 _“Don’t,”_ says Ryder, _“not yet,”_ but he sounds as fragile as Reyes feels. Like he’s made up of the same sleepless nights, the same empty whiskey bottles, bloodstained collars and dry-mouthed heat. Like he’s sleeping in cold sheets, too, the ones that don’t smell like anything or anyone in particular; _I don’t want to be alone,_ Reyes wants to say. _Not now, not when I wake up in the morning without you._ Having Ryder for a day and a half, through a comm channel and nothing else. Having his own hand and an empty bed, having the smarting ache in the middle of his chest and a collection of everything he doesn’t know how to say, messages he can’t bring himself to send-- soldier to spy. Comm-channel to channel. Shed armor and every spare minute they can get and Ryder, making those little pleading sounds in the back of his throat while Reyes muffles his voice against his own fist. Bringing himself off in frantic pulls, base to tip, _I want you here,_ he wants to say. _I’m in your bed and I want you here, I want more of you, I want so much more of you--_

 

“Please,” he gasps, and spills over his fist thinking of Ryder’s teeth on his throat, Ryder’s voice in his ear.

 

He lies there, boneless and shuddering, in the silence that stretches out after.

 

 _“Are you still with me?”_ Ryder whispers at last.

 

 _Always,_ he thinks.

 

“Yes,” he says; his voice sounds thick. “Did you--?”

 

_“Yeah. That was-- yeah.”_

 

Reyes closes his eyes. In the blackness there he thinks about the way Ryder kisses, after he’s come. Sloppy, too far gone to care how much tongue goes into it. The way he always coaxes them into something sweeter, dull nails scratching at the back of his scalp, bodies pressed together, racing hearts slowing.

 

Coming down.

 

Walls going up.

 

Ryder is quiet. Just slow breaths rushing in, deep, and out, on the other end of the comm. Reyes wonders if he’s already fallen asleep. “Scott,” he murmurs, scrubbing at his eyes with a knuckle. “Still with me?”

 

 _“S’my line,”_ says Scott, huffing out a laugh. _“I’m…yeah. I’m here.”_

 

But there’s a syrup-slowness to his voice. He’s drifting, exhaustion bleeding through the static. And not even Reyes is selfish enough to keep him longer, or to try to keep him at all, “I’ll let you go.”

 

 _“Mmhm,”_ says Scott, the sound downright dangerous, soft and sleepy through the static burst of the comm. Fuzzing in at Reyes’ ear, crawling down into the space behind his ribs and spreading there, soaking in. _“Reyes?”_

 

“Ryder.”

 

_“M’glad you picked up.”_

 

He forces a chuckle, thumbing the disconnect. “I’m glad you called.”

 

_“Me too.”_

 

“Get some rest, all right?”

 

 _“Uh-huh,”_ Scott mumbles, half asleep, _“I love you.”_

 

And the call drops.

 

...

 

Truth is a funny thing. Easy to tweak, malleable.

 

Adaptable, like Kadara.

 

Like Reyes.

 

He’s used to that, to shifting his words, talking his way around the matter at hand instead of talking straight through it. He’s used to bartering for a better bargain. Eyes up, eyes ahead, walking away from the things he wants but can’t quite seem to have-- it’s automatic, at this point, it’s only natural.

 

 _We kissed,_ Ryder had said, months ago now, shifting his weight nervously in the Tartarus backroom and looking at Reyes with a vulnerability no Pathfinder can afford to have. _Shouldn’t we talk about it?_

 

 _I love you,_ Ryder had said.

 

No more room left to keep Reyes guessing.

 

“Shit,” he whispers, blinking up at the ceiling, staring at the thin cracks cut through the cheap-shackled roof. “Shit,” he says again, and his throat closes up. The whir of the air conditioning kicks in, and blows cold. The neon numbers at the bedside read 0300.

 

He’d known already, hadn’t he? He’d had to have known.

 

It’s just nothing like what he had always imagined it would feel like. He doesn’t have a fancy AI to triple-check what he’d heard, to scrub the call for confessions. He doesn’t have the courage to call Ryder back, either. He just lies there, in Ryder’s room, in Ryder’s bed, his pulse through the roof, his mouth dry, come crusting his belly. Heart cupped in his hands.

 

Their lives are on opposite ends of a spectrum that plays with life and death. Reyes knows ruthlessness in his own degree, knows how to play the game; Ryder knows how to swoop in and save the day, to smile and wave and give the heartfelt speeches that the Nexus beams out to every planet with a transmitter. They’re incompatible. They always have been. And it doesn’t matter how many times Ryder tells him he trusts him, the same way it doesn’t matter how many times Reyes queues those victory speeches on repeat, sitting in an empty room with a bottle in his hand--

 

_The last thing this port needs is another hero._

 

He closes his eyes, heartbeat pounding in the blue dark. The glare of his omni-tool is still etched on the backs of his eyelids. Ryder’s voice is still ringing in his ears.

 

He’d wanted him at his back. In his bed. More than he’d ever wanted anything, maybe even more than he’d wanted Kadara itself. He had liked being in the same league as a Pathfinder, a leader; more than that, he’d liked being Scott’s inside man, Scott’s only man. The only person Scott could trust in Kadara Port and the only one he cared to. And he had liked the way Scott looked at him, yes, but he’d recognized that look, too: over-bright, eager to hide every uncertainty underneath.

 

He’d liked stripping that away.

 

The heat and the watercolor sky and lining up the places their mouths touched on the bottle rim-- the way he had felt under Reyes’ hands on the rooftop, the taste of whiskey and overwhelming relief and still, all Reyes had ever expected was Scott turned against him. A blocked frequency. A bullet in the back. Instead he’d found Scott’s hands in his hair, Scott’s knees open around his waist, Scott half-asleep on the other end of the comm line. Waking up with Scott’s head on his chest. Waking up without him, and for the first time in years, wishing he wasn’t alone. Not knowing how to be with someone. Not knowing how to be without them.

 

He had imagined, more than once, that if he were ever to change for someone, it would be for someone like Scott. He had been afraid to test the truth of it-- the idea laughable after too much whiskey or too little, sometimes nothing more than a steady daydream in the back of his mind--

 

But Scott is exactly the sort of man who lives the unimaginable.

 

Had Reyes forgotten that?

 

He gets up. He finds a clean towel in the tiny bathroom, and wipes himself down. He tosses his dirtied briefs to the floor, he puts on a fresh pair.

 

And then he climbs back into Ryder’s bed, and tries to sleep it off, like a bad night out.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Sometimes, despite everything they’ve been through, Reyes still expects to wake up on the Nexus.

 

Even after all those months waiting, and hoping, and slowly growing bitter, stir-crazy and trapped in the constant cycle of ship repairs-- even after all that, sometimes it seems as though they’ve only just arrived. Engines still cooling, frozen fingers thawing from cryo. The uprising and Kadara and Sloane, mouth slack. Belly painted red.

 

Other times-- when Reyes is rolling over and searching for the warmth of a body that isn’t there-- every breath he’s taken in this galaxy seems leaden, suffocating, overwhelming and sudden. Sometimes he can hardly remember what it had felt like to have faith in the Initiative. Sometimes all he can think about is how impossibly doomed they must be.

 

And sometimes he wakes up to miracles.

 

Sometimes he drags himself out of Ryder’s bed, fumbles for a cup of caf, switches on his datapad, and finds write-ups from three different Collective agents, detailing exactly how the human Pathfinder had managed, overnight, to singlehandedly rescue the asari ark. And how he had somehow maneuvered and _docked_ the thing _\--_ right next to Nexus control.

 

Just like that.

 

Keema stops by Ditaeon with a stack of briefings in the afternoon, scavenging around the apartment’s little kitchen for food paste while Reyes combs through the news vids, the soundbites and footage. Ryder is on screen, looking oddly subdued; the asari interviewing him is stumbling over her words, fighting down waves of emotion as the masses of her people are directed through customs at the docks. “I like this place,” says Keema cheerfully, pulling out an unopened jar from the back of a cupboard. “It’s much nicer than yours, you know. Although I suppose that isn’t saying much-- are you sure the Collective can’t all move in here, too?”

 

“Mm,” says Reyes, only half-listening.

 

“There’d be room enough if we got cozy--”

 

“It’s not happening, Keema.”

 

From the tinny datapad speakers there’s a soft, echoed cry; behind the set of the interview an asari with stark white markings has reunited with her partner. The reporter is distracted, watching them, trailing off in the middle of a question with her eyes full of emotion. Next to her Ryder looks blank. Looks like he just wants it to be over. Exhausted, worn down, always so tired, these days.

 

 _“You’ve achieved something incredible,”_ says the reporter.

 

 _“All part of the job,”_ says Ryder, not meeting her eyes.

 

“Spoken like a true Pathfinder,” says Keema, dryly, screwing off the lid to the paste jar and scooping the contents into her mouth with one long finger. “He hasn’t come around in a while, Reyes, are you two..?”

 

The words stop up in Reyes’ throat. Caught off guard by the question, by the weight in the answer-- that he’s afraid, afraid he’s in too deep. Afraid of what happens next. Ryder is all wear and tear-- isn’t that the truth? That he needs a real win, needs more than hope, more than Reyes can give. _He needs to stop carrying the weight of everyone, he needs someone who can carry him; he loves me,_ and it sours on his tongue. _He said he loved me._

 

 _I don’t know how to carry him,_ he thinks, feeling his stomach turn over. _I’ve spent so long trying to save myself that I don’t know how to save someone else._

 

“We’re fine,” he says at last, Keema staring at him, the quiet in the air tangible, and painfully telling, “he’s busy, he’s just busy. And I’m-- hand me that kett report, would you?”

 

...

 

Ryder’s name flashes up on the face of his datapad as Keema is leaving: private channel, video-call. And again, while he’s on his way to Kralla’s Song-- Umi has the table in the corner reserved for him, with a drink already waiting. Crux is running late, so Reyes has already made a comfortable start on his first round by the time she walks through the door--

 

And has watched two more of the Pathfinder’s calls flash up, and time out.

 

“You want to take that?” Crux asks, a third of the way through his second round, a fourth of the way through marking down tariffs on new Nexus supplies, the fifth time Ryder calls.

 

He turns the datapad over on the table.

 

Crux gives him a look.

 

“It’s personal,” Reyes says. “Not business.”

 

“If it’s the Pathfinder,” Crux answers, “isn’t it usually both?”

 

That leaves a bad taste in his mouth. One that not even his third round washes down. But if something had happened, Reyes would know about it, wouldn’t he? He has eyes and ears everywhere-- and nothing _happens_ on the Nexus, anyway. Nothing but constant renovation, Addison’s posturing, Tann’s bullshit.

 

“Umi,” says Reyes to fill his own silence, lifting his empty glass. “Another?”

 

...

 

The first time Reyes had been accused of being a coward--

 

It was years ago. What feels like a lifetime ago, now. Fresh out of flight school, new jumpsuit and uppity attitude and tacky callsign, painted on the side of his locker. It had been one of his squad’s first real runs, bringing in air support after the evacuation of an Alliance operation team.

 

Things had gotten messy, on the ground-- hijacked cargo, batarian slavers. There had been an issue with screwy radio signals, t-minus fifteen minutes before the bombs were dropped. No one had really thought anything of it.

 

At least not until they cleared away the rubble and found the Alliance operatives, buried along with the batarians.

 

How could they have known that the team had gone back for the cargo? How should they have known to check for sabotage, for blocked transmission lines? Reyes remembers reading through his squad’s reports, remembers thinking how their explanations sounded awfully like excuses. He remembers pulling late nights and the attempt to write up a report of his own, staring at the bright screen in the dark room, mixing liquor in with his caf. _We didn’t mean to. We didn’t know._

 

They’d never been reprimanded. The brass had bigger things to worry about, and the majority of the operation had been covert; most of the Alliance didn’t have the clearance for the first page of the file. And no one held it against them, not openly, anyway-- but rumors got around. Not the details, just the morality of the thing, _you hear what happened, what they did? Vidal, Vidal’s guys--_ the story changed all the time. His squad had dropped the bombs knowing the operatives were there. His squad had left them for dead and gone out for drinks. There was even a retelling where he’d cut the transmission lines himself. His callsign-- _Anubis--_ wasn’t so tacky anymore. It was a threat. It was a warning. It was proof.

 

Reyes had never known what to say. _We didn’t mean-- we didn’t know-- we wanted to save the day. We thought we were the heroes._

 

Maybe that had been the day he’d decided to stop trying to be one.

 

The gossip here, sometimes, is as bad as it was then, although the company then had been better. And the whispers are loud, stupid or brave, aimed by loose-lipped troublemakers in the market square or speckling the retching corners of Kadara’s clubs. Drunken Collective recruits, fresh off the last Nexus dump, saying _whoever the Charlatan pretends they are, just some bastard hiding behind a screen._ Using the words _gutless. Liar._

 

_Coward._

 

“Shit,” he mutters to the empty room, sitting down hard on the edge of Ryder’s mattress. It’s nearly dark already, the sky fading scarlet; he’d missed two more calls on the shuttle to Ditaeon. “Fuck,” he says, and he hasn’t had enough to drink to be able to ignore the guilt.

 

_Gutless, liar--_

 

He pulls up a vid-call.

 

Ryder answers almost immediately. Face flickering up, pillow-creased cheek and worried mouth, _“Reyes?”_

 

Reyes wonders if he should have practiced an apology beforehand. “Ryder,” he starts--

 

But that’s as far as he gets.

 

 _“Finally,”_ Ryder cuts over him, voice raw and static-blurred on the other end of the line, _“fuck, it’s so good to-- to see you. I’m sorry I’ve been calling-- all day, I know you’re busy, I know we’re-- can you just talk to me?_ _About anything, I don’t care.”_

 

There are deep shadows under his eyes. His hands are locked tightly in his lap. He looks terrible-- even worse than he had on the asari’s news report, and Reyes’ heart skips a beat, reservation gone altogether, dread spreading like poison. “Something’s wrong,” he says, his mouth going dry with disbelief. “Something-- did something happen?”

 

_“It’s nothing. I mean, it’s...not nothing, it’s-- there was a standoff, kind of--”_

 

“I thought you were on the Nexus?!”

 

“ _I was, I’m okay, I--”_

 

“Are you safe? Tell me you’re safe, I swear to God,” he’s halfway to jumping to his feet, and firing up his shuttle engines. Not that his shuttle would do any good in deep space, but maybe he could hitch a ride on an outgoing transit. Or take one of the fighter jets the Collective’s been piecing together from kett parts; they’ve never tested the engines but if he needs to get off-planet and do it fast--

 

 _“I’m fine,”_ says Ryder hastily, putting an end to the hot-wire of his brain. _“I’m fine, I’m on the Tempest, we’re in atmo. It happened this morning.”_

 

“Shit. Shit, _shit,_ why haven’t I heard anything?”

 

 _“Because,”_ Ryder laughs, strained, almost hysterical. _“They’ve shut down most outgoing communications. They’re doing their best to keep it quiet, Reyes, they-- they shot a woman in front of me. She tried to separate me from SAM and they shot her in the middle of the docking bay. Kandros set up a sniper--”_

 

He breaks off, one hand rubbing over his eyes.

 

 _“I was standing right next to her,”_ he says, his voice unsteady. _“Her blood was all over my shirt, I didn’t know they were going to take the shot, Christ...”_

 

“She tried to destroy SAM?”

 

_“There were-- she set up EMPs, too.”_

 

Reyes swallows, hard. “Ryder,” he says. “If she posed a legitimate threat...”

 

_“They could’ve arrested her! Or put her back in cryo, or anything else, they can’t undo a bullet to the head--”_

 

“From Kandros’s point of view, it would have been your life or hers.” He knows, he can hear how it sounds. Coming from him, specifically, “He made a hard call, Ryder--”

 

_“Damn it, Reyes, she had a son!”_

 

“Everyone has someone,” he answers, softly.

 

Ryder’s eyes are wet. He wipes at his face with one sleeve, breath let loose in shaky bursts. _“That’s how you justify Sloane?”_

 

They take lives every day, the both of them. There has never been a choice to make, between fight or flight-- if they don’t fight, they die, and Reyes searches for a way to say it, still painfully aware of the weight of the words in his mouth, explanations slipping, every time, into excuses, “There has to be a justification. Or we’d lose ourselves.”

 

_“We’re losing ourselves anyway. If the kett don’t turn us into monsters, we’ll do it on our own-- I know you dream about her, I know-- I barely sleep anymore, do you?”_

 

Through the grain of the omni-lens Reyes can see the way Ryder’s hands tremble, when he drags his fingers through his hair. He wonders if he’s expecting the worst. If he’s learned already to expect the worst, from him.

 

_“Reyes--”_

 

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ryder.”

 

_“I want you to be honest--”_

 

“You don’t think I’m trying?”

 

 _“I know you are,”_ Scott says, looking lost now. _“And I don’t mean to-- I know there’s no point in wishing it could have gone down another way. What’s done is done, I’m just-- I’m tired of not talking about it, this is why we don’t talk about it, right? This is why we’re not-- you know.”_

 

“What--” Reyes shakes his head, tries to shake off the feeling: hurt slipping between his ribs like an omni-blade, knife-edge, sinking deep. “Why we’re not _what?”_

 

_“Don’t say it like that, you know what I--”_

 

“We’re not _what,_ Ryder?”

 

 _“Together!”_ Ryder blurts. _“Are we together, is ‘boyfriend’ too strong of a word, how should I know? You never tell me anything, Reyes, we never talk about what we did to Sloane, or whatever you’re doing with Kaetus-- or about us, and half the time I only feel like I know you when I’m in your bed--”_

 

“What are you--?”

 

_“I have this image in my mind of you, of who I think you are. Of who you are with me--”_

 

Reyes feels it build the way dust-storms do. The way the fog billows in thick clouds off the hot springs in the cool mornings, gathering slowly behind his ribs, blurring everything in front of him. “You know who I am.”

 

_“I know what you choose to tell me. Which is always half the story, or none of it at all--”_

 

“I don’t lie to you, Scott!”

 

 _“But you never give me a straight answer, either,”_ says Ryder, pleading. _“And I deserve that much from you, I deserve-- to know you. To know if there’s something real here, or if you’re holding onto something that’s gone on for too long. If getting the Pathfinder in your pocket was just another thing on the Charlatan’s agenda.”_

 

Reyes’ heart plunges like a stone, sinking, cold, to the bottom of his stomach.

 

And when Ryder speaks again his voice comes out shot. Wavering on the edge of something that Reyes wants desperately to backpedal from, _“I said you could have your secrets, Reyes, and I meant it. But you and me-- letting you keep me at arm’s length-- I don’t know if I can do it, I can’t...”_

 

There’s a pause. Long enough that the echo of the words start to sicken in the silence, his heartbeat thudding in his ears, hollow, hollow.

 

 _“I can’t,”_ Scott repeats, quieter.

 

Static and grain, and systems away, always systems away, always out of reach-- Reyes doesn’t answer. The look on Ryder’s face says enough: not the soft half-smile from the roof, from between the folds of his sheets, but the ghost image from the cave. Cut, deeply. Cracked, not enough to shatter. Only ever enough to hurt.

 

And it feels too late to stop it now. Like the way it feels when he turns his eyes skyward and finds the Tempest already hitting atmo, digging his fingers into palms to keep from fumbling for Ryder’s frequency and begging, _come back, come back,_ watching the ship grow ever-smaller, above him.

 

Until it disappears, altogether.

 

Ryder’s eyes drop. The pain there has settled, and stayed, _come back,_ Reyes thinks, watching him slip away. Wanting to snap the both of them out of it, wanting to rewind every word to do it all over again. Wanting to do everything over again, from the Milky Way then to Andromeda now, wanting to be the man Ryder thinks he is. Or thought he was, once; he wants to be someone, or maybe just be someone else. The someone Ryder wants.

 

Keema is wrong. Kadara does need a hero, it needs all the heroes it can get.

 

But it’s not Reyes, and it never will be.

 

One of them disconnects.

 

Later, he can’t seem to remember which one of them it was.

 

...

 

Keema may have supplied the guards, but the safehouse Kaetus has been moved to is the Charlatan’s alone. Top floor, tucked away behind the market square, well-fortified-- he’d been saving it, although for what, in retrospect, he isn’t sure. Maybe in case of betrayal, from within the Collective. Maybe in case of whatever he thought would happen at the duel. Of everything he hadn’t expected, and still can’t wrap his mind around: Ryder, choking down his moral compass for Reyes’ own sake. Watching. Standing witness, watching her bleed--

 

_They shot a woman in front of me._

 

He tightens his grip on the bottle in his hand. “Tell me,” he says by way of greeting, his words thick with whiskey and slow in his mouth, the guards re-locking the door behind him, “why did Sloane hate the angara?”

 

Kaetus has never denied him the answers to any of the questions he asks. He seems resigned to this, their meetings. Reyes often wonders who Kaetus thinks he is. Keema’s lackey, bored and nosy. Some nobody information broker who was owed a favor. It’s unlikely he knows the truth, or that he would even entertain the idea-- Kaetus’s version of the Charlatan is cold-blooded, trigger-happy. Not someone who would struggle to give the green light on an execution. Certainly not someone who would show up like this, slumped against the doorway, asking after the dead.

 

“Why does it matter?” Kaetus says, looking up from his datapad. On screen Reyes glimpses the same footage he’d seen this morning; asari ark, tearful reporter, Ryder’s expression, pale and strained.

 

“It doesn’t. Just-- tell me, why not.”

 

“You might not want to hear the answer.”

 

“It’s not about what I want to hear.”

 

The turian eyes him with some perplexity, and a good deal of disinterest. “She didn’t hate them,” he replies. “But she’d already been exiled once, and she wasn’t keen on the idea of doing it all over again. Their numbers overwhelmed ours. She was afraid they’d turn.”

 

Reyes snorts, indelicately. “She beat them into submission daily. That’s hate-- or bloodlust-- not fear.”

 

“We’re all afraid of the things we don’t understand.”

 

“See, then, here’s what I don’t understand--” He takes a long pull, grimacing at the taste, eye-watering, acidic. Nothing like the liquor he saves for Tempest shore parties, for Ryder’s breath at his ear, fingers around the neck of the bottle, playing at the nape of his neck. “The kett,” he says, trying to think-- trying, at the very least, to think about something else, anything else. “When the kett resurfaced-- you went behind her back, didn’t you, to clean it up? Her right-hand man, and you didn’t trust her? She did awful things, you don’t deny that, did it bother you?”

 

“Why do you care?”

 

“I’ve done awful things,” says Reyes vaguely, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Someone has to. I never liked it but it needed to happen, someone had to do it--”

 

“Funny,” says Kaetus. “She used to tell me the same exact thing.”

 

It occurs to Reyes, very suddenly, what he’s said, without saying it at all. And how Kaetus is looking at him, keenly, his datapad forgotten on the desk.

 

He wets his lips. “The Outcasts--”

 

“The Outcasts are gone, Vidal,” says Kaetus. Not accusing. Almost gently. “You aren’t here to ask about them, so don’t. You want to know her, to know Sloane? It’s too late for that. You want to know if I doubted her, in all the time I knew her-- you want to know if I loved her anyway?”

 

“Did you?” asks Reyes, hoarse, quiet.

 

“You know I did,” Kaetus replies, and this time, every layer of his voice is steady. “You know I fucking did.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna wait to upload this bc i wrote it like two months ago and i still don't know if i like it...but then i was like fuck it!! for all y'all who stuck with me on this one xxx

_Thirty four seconds._

 

Reyes reads the email. Then reads it again, _Mr. Vidal:_

 

_I’m not sure how else to say this._

 

Salarian Pathfinder, salarian ark. Kett command center, krogan scouts--

 

\-- _Ryder’s heart was stopped for an extended period of time. He was clinically dead for thirty-four seconds before resuscitation was possible._

 

Clinically dead.

 

_For thirty four seconds._

 

Reyes puts down the datapad. Stands up-- dizzy-- sits down.

 

Picks up the datapad, rereads:

 

_Clinically dead for thirty four seconds._

 

It goes on, after that. As if there is a way to go on, after that.

 

_The Pathfinder has scheduled the Tempest to dock at Kadara Port for minor repairs. Our landing is marked within the hour, although it isn’t clear how long we’ll be staying._

 

_Squadmates who witnessed the event reported that Ryder mentioned you by name before flatlining. Whatever your relationship to him is or was, I felt you deserved to know._

 

_Dr. Lexi T’Perro; Andromeda Initiative, Survey Ship Tempest_

 

...

 

The day passes, dream-like. Reyes starts four projects and finishes none of them. He misses his check-in with Crux. He doesn’t answer when Keema calls. He holes himself up in the back room of Tartarus for the first time in a month, and steadies his hands around a bottle rim, steadies his heartbeat against the numb, constant thud of the bass.

 

What was the last thing he’d said to Ryder? What had it been? He can’t remember-- two weeks since they’ve spoken, and he can’t remember? But it hadn’t seemed important then, small and insignificant; now it’s as though the ground under his feet has been pulled away along with those missing words, whatever he had or hadn’t said, every syllable between comms.

 

He’s remembering everything else. The way the sunlight caught in Ryder's eyes. Ryder’s hand on his thigh, the reckless, dizzying sort of smile he'd always seemed to reserve for Reyes alone. The arched line of Ryder’s back, braced under him, his name in Ryder’s mouth, _Reyes. Hey, Reyes--_

 

“...Reyes?”

 

His voice is quiet. The way he talks when he’s nervous, rocking back on his heels and keeping his space like Reyes is some spooked Kadaran adhi, hackles up and claws out. Reyes pushes the datapad away, clambering to his feet. Feeling clumsy, and too big for his body.

 

They stand there, then, and stare at each other.

 

“Hey,” Ryder clears his throat, eyes sliding away from Reyes. He’s lingering in the clubroom doorway, like he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to come in at all, “Hey. How...how are you?”

 

“Good,” says Reyes, hoarsely. “Good, I’m--” His heart is knocking hard against his ribs, eyes fixed on Ryder like he’s seeing him for the first time. Or the last, “I’m fine.”

 

“Great. That’s...great.”

 

They stand there for another moment that stretches into something longer, almost unbearable. The club music thrums from the basement, white noise, muted. Reyes’ mouth is desert-dry. _Thirty-four seconds. Thirty-four seconds, Ryder--_

 

“I’m here for PeeBee,” says Ryder at last, lamely, gesturing off at nothing. “She lost something, a remnant bot.” He smiles a little, or tries to, the corners of his mouth twisting in a weary way. “It’s, uh, it’s named Poc. Kind of spunky, Observer design...anyway, I thought you might’ve heard something.”

 

“Nothing about remnant,” Reyes replies. “I’m sorry, I-- I wish I had a lead for you.”

 

“That’s all right. You’ll let me know, right?”

 

“Of course. Are you--”

 

He almost says, _are you staying the night._

 

“How long are you here?”

 

Ryder rubs at the back of his neck, ugly creases deep under his eyes, gaze stuck somewhere a foot above Reyes’ head. So worn down. More so than the last time he’d seen him, across the vidconn. “I’m not sure. I don’t think we’ll be more than a few hours, but it depends, I guess. On whether we find a lead. Or if it gets complicated. Lots of things…seem to get complicated. With me.”

 

“Maybe you’re unlucky,” Reyes says, still trying to tease.

 

“Maybe I am,” says Ryder, still trying to smile.

 

“It’s a popular theory with me, too.”

 

“Well, you’re a popular man.”

 

“So long as I’m still your kind of man.”

 

The answer to that is spelled out on Ryder’s face, so painfully clear. And Reyes’ smile sticks around the rim of his glass, swallowing down whiskey in the strain of his silence. _I’ll drink to that,_ he could say. _Here’s to everything I’ve ruined,_ _here’s to clinically dead for thirty-four seconds. Here’s to whatever lack of luck sent you my way. Here’s to us, whatever you thought we were, here’s to every other way I could say it without saying anything, really._

 

_Here’s to complicated, as long as it keeps you here._

 

_Here’s to whatever keeps you here._

 

He should say it. He means to say it, and say it all. But it’s swallowed up by the stiffness in Ryder’s spine, the way he’s shifting on his feet, and by the time he’s squared his shoulders, it feels too late to say it at all.

 

“I’d better get going,” Ryder says.

 

After he’s gone, Reyes drinks to that, too.

 

...

 

He stays well out of the Pathfinder's way, for the rest of the afternoon. He has a few eyes and ears keep a well-distanced tab on him, of course-- and he puts out a hefty reward for information on tampered remnant tech-- but he stays off the comms. Stays off of Ryder’s frequency. He sticks to the shadows, keeps to himself.

 

And when he sees the Tempest powering up for lift-off, he swallows back the impulse to run out onto the docking tarmac and wave his arms like a madman. Biting down on his tongue, on things that might make him stay: _w_ _ait, wait. Please,_ and _I’ll do better. I’m trying to do better, I don’t know if I can do better. I’m not sorry I killed her but I’m sorry you were there; I’m sorry I don’t know how to do this; I’m sorry._

 

If he keeps reminding himself that they were an impossibility from the start, someday he might actually believe it.

 

He powers his shuttle down at the edge of the outpost that night, the way he always does, the way that’s become habit. Kadara’s sun has sunk behind the mountain range, but the sky is still fire-orange, slowly fading into deep night-cycle blue. He curls up on his side in Ryder’s bed and closes his eyes, the sheets soft under his cheek, regret sour in his mouth, soaking in bone-deep. He wonders whether the Tempest has mapped out its next destination yet. Whether Ryder found what he was looking for. Whether Reyes will ever get used to it, to Ryder landing to turn his life upside-down and taking to orbit the same day. Like he was never there at all. Like every other thing they don’t tell each other, _we won’t talk about work, we won’t talk about Sloane._ Like the word _trust_ in Ryder’s mouth--

 

If he dreams, he doesn’t remember it.

 

The room is still pitch-black when his eyes snap open again. He isn’t sure what’s woken him, at first; he’s disoriented, swaying up from where he’d sprawled over the bedspread.

 

The security alarm is going off.

 

It’s sort of a slap-trap job-- even the Initiative’s resources can be stretched thin, here-- still, it’s wired well enough to catch someone forcing an entry, or coming in through the roof hatch, the fire escape. Reyes is rolling out of bed before his mind can really catch up with his body, flinging out one hand to fumble for his pistol on the side-table, bringing it up to aim with his thumb on the safety, and his forefinger on the trigger--

 

“Woah,” says Scott.

 

Reyes almost drops the gun.

 

He’s standing in the doorway, swaying in the black-blue shadows, unsteady on his feet. He’s laughing. He’s _bleeding--_ there’s blood on the outpost floor, on Ryder’s hands, trickling from his nose.

 

“Barfight,” says Scott, much too cheerfully for someone whose face has an uncanny resemblance to the inside of a certain angaran fruit. “You should--” he sways toward Reyes and Reyes _does_ actually drop the gun this time, to catch him by the shoulder, “you should see the other guy.” He’s grinning, blood wet on his teeth, staining his collar. “The other-- guys. People. There were, like, twenty.”

 

“Really,” says Reyes, mouth dry, pulse still spiked high. “I thought-- you said you were only here for the afternoon?”

 

“Uh-huh,” says Ryder, vaguely, “well, it got complicated. Fight was fun, at least.”

 

“I saw your crew firing up the engines.”

 

“Lotta broken chairs by the end of it, Kian’s so pissed...”

 

“Ryder--”

 

“Ryder,” repeats Scott, mocking him with an edge, “ _Ryder._ I don’t call you _Vidal._ And you-- you never call me at all.”

 

It stings. No matter how much truth there is to it. No matter how sad Ryder looks, in the aftermath, or how soft-eyed. Looking at Reyes the way he used to, like he’s looking at somebody else, somebody Reyes used to be, wants to be, wants to be again.

 

Someday, Reyes thinks, he’ll lose that look for good.

 

He takes Ryder’s chin in his hand and pretends it hasn’t cut him as deeply as it has, turning his face to the side to get a better look at the bruises there, reddened and a little swollen. “You’ll need medi-gel for these.”

 

Ryder makes a small, amused sort of sound. “I’ve had worse,” he says, his hand going to Reyes’ hip and squeezing. “Can’t live up to the legend all the time-- you know I died? Twice! Just for a little while, I’m okay. You’re--”

 

He looks startled, suddenly, eyes going wide, glancing around the room like he’s seeing the place for the first time.

 

“Hey,” he says, astonished. “This is my room. You’re in my room.”

 

When Reyes chuckles it catches, coming up. Catches like the snap of the pistol safety, like the slide of sweat on the back of his neck in Tartarus, under the covers, in the back of the cave, coming into the light with his heart crawling up the back of his throat, vulnerable. As vulnerable as he’s ever made himself, as he’ll ever be.

 

“Hey, Reyes,” says Ryder, drawing his name out into a slur of syllables, bumping their noses together, breathing out against his mouth, fingers in Reyes’ hair. “Hey.”

 

“You’re drunk.”

 

“No. I’m not, I’m--”

 

Reyes feels his breath, warm in the dark. The softness of his mouth. He tastes like blood-copper, old protein bars and _whiskey, neat._ He kisses deep and insistent, holding Reyes’ face in his hands, the pad of his thumb against Reyes’ pulse. It’s the kind of kiss that Reyes remembers, from the flat with the fruit on the counter. From the storage room, breathless, sudden but not sorry. Deliberate, the kind that means he’s been thinking about it for a long time, tangling want and need into something inseparable. 

 

But when they break apart--

 

He looks exhaustedly, achingly tired.

 

Like he wants to lie down in the middle of the floor, and take Reyes with him.

 

Sometimes the end-- to them, to everything, to the finish line of whatever this is-- feels so inevitable and so far away at the same time, creeping up over them like the shadows that stretch out when the sun hits center-sky. The shadows where Reyes works best, out of sight, out of mind. _Thinking of you, always; thinking of you, still,_ and he wonders whether Ryder had kept that message. Whether he’d believed it. Or whether he’d dropped it in the archives with the rest of the Nexus control updates, the tech reminders and junk mail.

 

Ryder is pressing peppered kisses along his chin, nuzzling into his cheek. “Are you sleeping in my bed?” he asks, slurring the question against the corner of his mouth. “Did you miss me, I didn’t think you’d...”

 

He sways on his feet, tipping into Reyes’ chest. Leaning up to chase his mouth again, teeth catching along his bottom lip, “Right,” Reyes says, voice scraping out in a throat half-shuttered, turning his head and pressing him back, steering him toward the edge of the bed. “Let’s just-- sit down, Ryder--”

 

He sits, obediently. Then sort of slumps over, bouncing back on the mattress with his legs dangling over the side. Reyes kneels and takes one foot in his hand, working his heel out of his shoe. “Hell,” Ryder mumbles, staring up at the ceiling. “My dad’d kill me if he could see me right now. Wish...kinda wish you two coulda met.”

 

“Tell me about him,” says Reyes, playing along; he tugs, hard, and the first shoe comes loose, and drops to the floor.

 

“N7. Tightass, crazy workaholic. Good at what he did, though.” Ryder smiles, blearily. “Would’ve-- hah-- would’ve hated you. Would’ve hated this place, never could’ve seen it for...for everything. Never would’ve agreed to go with you, to that party at Sloane’s, never would’ve-- remember that party?”

 

Of course Reyes remembers. It would be hard to forget, the sun going down over the port skyline, honeyed light peeking through the white spires. The first time Reyes had really truly believed that Kadara could actually be saved, with Ryder’s legs swinging off the edge of the rooftop, Ryder’s eyes lit up earnest and bright, _you’re someone to me._

 

“I was so sure you were gonna ditch me. Or use me, y’know, bring the Pathfinder to a party and pull a job. But it was worth it, you were-- hey, Reyes? Can I tell you something?”

 

Reyes glances up at him, crouching between his open knees. Ryder squirms until he’s sitting up again, pitching forward to push one hand through Reyes’ hair, blinking at him, blurry.

 

“I really like you,” Ryder says, voice small, suddenly, and lost. “I mean it, I do. Sometimes you’re like a puzzle-- but I like puzzles, so-- and you know I don’t really mean…like.”

 

The other shoe comes away in Reyes’ hand.

 

“It’s just a word. It’s just…a two letter difference, you know?”

 

“It’s more than that, Ryder.”

 

“Doesn’t have to be.”

 

“You’re drunk,” says Reyes, again.

 

“But I’m not lying,” says Ryder. “You know I don’t, I wouldn’t, not about this.”

 

There’s a thin line of fresh blood trickling from his nose. Reyes reaches up, and wipes it away with a knuckle, not trusting himself to speak; Ryder catches his hand and holds it there, between them, Reyes’ fingers against Ryder’s cheek, Ryder’s eyes sad, and dark.

 

And then Ryder turns his head, and vomits onto the floor.

 

...

 

He stays hunched over the toilet for a good ten minutes, with Reyes’ hand rubbing steady circles between his shoulder blades. Everything he heaves up is an unfortunate green-ish color; Reyes makes a mental note to talk to Umi about trying out new drinks on the human Pathfinder.

 

“Better?” Reyes murmurs when Ryder sits back on his heels at last, gasping a little. He keeps his hand on Ryder’s back, feeling the shaky rise and fall of each breath. Feeling him breathe. Counting the seconds, absentmindedly.

 

“Uh-huh,” Ryder answers weakly, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and making a face. He still looks like shit, pale-faced and brow lined with sweat, and under the bright lights of the bathroom Reyes can see everything that the shadows had hid. All the blood that has drenched the collar of Ryder’s shirt, how much is still crusting from his nose to his chin. He’s sticky to the touch, too, like someone had spilled a drink all the way down his front-- maybe like he’d spilled it on himself. “Just tired,” Ryder sighs, dropping his head against Reyes’ shoulder. “Reyes--”

 

“You can’t sleep yet,” Reyes tells him. “You’re filthy, let’s-- let’s wash you up, hmm? Clean you up a little.”

 

Ryder makes a weary sound. But he doesn’t stop Reyes when he gets to his feet, and twists at the shower nozzles. The outpost’s water is good, pumped directly from the pools in the valley, and it doesn’t take long for the water heater to kick in. When the taps are running warm he turns back to Ryder, who’s struggling with his sleeves stuck over his head, and helps him undress the rest of the way. Untangling his shirt, stripping him out of the tank top underneath. Tugging his pants down to his ankles, letting Ryder steady himself against Reyes’ shoulder while he kicks the rest of the way out of them--

 

When Reyes looks at him, his breath leaves him like a gut-punch.

 

The bruises are ugly. Too many to count. He reaches out and touches Ryder’s chest, thumb ghosting over each yellow-green mark; underneath the uniform Ryder looks gaunter, too, thinner. “Ryder,” says Reyes, hoarsely. “How--”

 

“Krogan,” says Ryder. “Scouts.”

 

His eyes flicker off to the side, looking away. He stands up abruptly, swaying a little, shuffling toward the shower.

 

“It’s fine, I’m-- I can do it,” he mutters, swatting off Reyes when he tries to reach for him. “I can do it.”

 

“If you need me--”

 

Ryder steps under the spray, his back to him.

 

And that’s dismissal enough.

 

The security alarm is still flashing silently outside. After a brief reconnaissance Reyes finds the passcode on another one of those little notes Ryder has lying around, and the alarms stop; he sends a message Tate’s way, to put him at ease, and he double-checks that the wiring has been reset.

 

In the bathroom the shower is still running, drumming in muffled sheets against the shower tiles. He knocks against the closed bathroom door, waiting outside. “Ryder?”

 

There isn’t an answer.

 

He knocks again, louder this time; when Ryder still doesn’t respond, he opens the door, worry prickling at the back of his neck-- and finds Scott curled up in the corner, knees folded to his chest, ass bare on the tile floor.

 

“Ryder--” Water is pouring hot from the faucet overhead. Reyes twists at the nozzles until it shuts off, then reaches out, and squeezes his shoulder. “Scott? Hey--”

 

Ryder startles awake, blinking fast. He looks embarrassed when he looks up to find Reyes crouching over him, like he’s been caught red-handed, sleeping on shift.

 

“Hey,” Reyes repeats. The shower spray isn’t there, anymore, to hide the way his voice wavers. “All right?”

 

“I was just,” says Ryder, roughly, words forming slow. “I got dizzy. Just-- wanted to close my eyes, for a second, I’m just, I’m tired--”

 

“Scott,” starts Reyes, but his throat is tight. He runs his fingers up Ryder’s forearm, tightens his grip at his elbow, watching how Ryder swallows, hard, his eyes still a little unfocused, and glazed half-over. “Scott.”

 

“I’m okay,” Ryder says, voice breaking with the effort. “I’m just tired, I’m so tired. I just wanted to see you, Reyes--”

 

Six-hundred years to reach Andromeda. A year longer to reach the port. Waiting to take Kadara as his own, waiting to tell Ryder the truth, waiting for Ryder to trust him again. To look him in the eye. To come back. He’s had enough of waiting, he realizes, to last the rest of his lifetime, and he knows, suddenly, that this call is his alone, that Ryder isn’t going to meet him halfway. Not on this one.

 

So he crawls onto the wet shower floor in his boxers and socks.

 

And he puts his arms around Ryder’s neck.

 

He doesn’t know why he thought Scott would cry quiet. Maybe because he couldn’t ever imagine him crying at all, only ever biting it back, swallowing it down, shouldering it along with everything else. But naked on the shower floor Scott cries messy, heaving, everything. Cries like little kids do, uncontrollably, huddled up and shaking against Reyes’ chest; like he’s twenty-two and lost, in a galaxy that’s gone halfway to shit. Like his heart had stopped and he had felt it when it went cold, like he’s still feeling it, like somewhere down the line he’d made a tough call, and left people behind, and hasn’t slept since, like he never asked for this-- and would his father have made the same choice? Would his father have saved everyone? He wears his father’s armor but he never asked what they did with his father’s body, he was afraid to ask what they did with his father’s body, he’s afraid to visit his sister because _what would I say? What would I tell her?_

 

It all creeps up so slow.

 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps between shuddering breaths, pressing his face into Reyes’ neck. His voice is small and clogged and all cut up, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I missed you-- fuck, I missed you, I didn’t want to say it. We were past atmo and I made them turn the ship around, I went to Tartarus but you weren’t there, and I just wanted to see you, Reyes. I just needed to see you.”

 

Reyes rocks him, cradling the weight of his body. Skin to skin, faucet dripping, tears hot against his chest. He rests his cheek against the top of Scott’s head, feeling the pattern of his breath, hitching, out-of-rhythm. Listening to him talk, sounding ragged, sounding painfully sober.

 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” begs Scott. “I don’t want to go back to the Tempest, I don’t want to leave, I don’t want you to let me. I don’t want to go back, please, don’t make me go back.”

 

But he doesn’t mean it. They both know that. He’s come too far, believes too fiercely, sacrificed too much to give it up now. That starry-eyed march and its mantra, repeating, _we’ll make it, we’ll make it--_ and so Reyes doesn’t give him what he wants to hear. He doesn’t tell him to stay, to let it fall to someone else. He strokes his hair, and kisses the back of his neck, and feels the catch in his chest soothe and ease up. And Ryder's breathing evens out. And the begging stops, after that.

 

And the tears stop, too.

 

He puts Scott to bed. In his own bed, sitting him down on the edge and holding a glass of water to his lips. Catching the drops that slide out of the corner of his mouth with his thumb, wiping them on the clean sheets. He pulls the blankets up over them both and by then Ryder is halfway to half-gone.

 

He imagines him curled up on the Tempest like this. Without anyone but the AI in his head, with the weight of golden worlds on his shoulders alone, two-hundred-thousand of humanity’s best, all the lives of his crew. Slumped over with one arm stretched out, palm-up, fingers open.

 

No matter how many rigged shots he’s taken-- it’s Reyes’ hand that fits there, better than anybody else’s.

 

“I wanted to be the man you think I am,” says Reyes softly in the dark, Ryder’s breath slow and warm against his lips. “Or thought I was-- that’s all, Ryder.”

 

“You already are,” Ryder answers. “Don’t you know that? You always were.”

 

…

 

He leaves the warmth of their bed, in the middle of the night, 0400 and counting.

 

He takes the shuttle, lights bright against the dark desert sand.

 

The port streets are still and quiet-- too early for proper commerce, too late for proper celebration. There’s a few drunks still gathering themselves together outside of closed bar doors. There’s the blur of shadows at the edges of alleyways, scarves pulled up around trader’s faces, dirty credits exchanged in omni-orange flickers. But Reyes’ business is within familiar territory: his safe-house, its prisoner inside.

 

The midnight guards outside the cell door are paid off, easily enough-- loyalty on Kadara only goes so far. In the morning they’ll go straight to Keema to report it, no doubt, but for now they leave him be, and leave Kaetus be, too, watching silently as Reyes snaps cuffs on his wrists and puts his gun at his back, walking him through the elevator doors and out to the shuttle.

 

Reyes keeps the muzzle trained on him, sliding into the pilot’s seat.

 

“What’s going on,” says Kaetus, monotone; when Reyes doesn’t reply, he doesn’t push. He lets his head fall back against the seat instead, staring out the window at the blur of pale orange crags, the fine clouds of sand stirred up by the engine-- like he knows where Reyes is taking him. Like he’s been expecting this, since the very beginning.

 

It isn’t far. Maybe fifteen minutes out from Ditaeon, past Sulfur Springs, bordering on Haarfel. The valley stretches out in front of them, the cliffs looming up overhead on either side. Kaetus obeys without protest when he gestures with the pistol, sliding out of the shuttle and out onto the desert ground. Reyes follows close behind him, the gun’s muzzle still fixed target-steady on the back of his head.

 

“Stay still,” says Reyes.

 

He unlocks the cuffs.

 

They thud, heavy, to the ground.

 

And Kaetus stands frozen for a moment, hands still held behind his back, bound by nothing. “What are you doing,” he says.

 

Reyes presses the hilt of the pistol into his hand.

 

“What are you _doing?”_

 

“Start walking,” Reyes replies. “You’ll need to get a good head-start, if you want to make it off-planet. Keema will know I’m lying when I tell her you’re dead, her people will be hunting you by midday.”

 

He meets Reyes’ eyes with a desperate, slow-dawning understanding, a timid, fearful hope. “You’re helping me?”

 

“I’m trying.”

 

“You’re-- fucking with me.”

 

“Kaetus,” he says, shaking his head. “Start walking.”

 

The turian’s mandibles click, his claws tightening around the pistol-hilt. “I don’t trust you,” he says, uncertainly.

 

“And I can’t blame you for that.” Reyes unslings the bag from over his shoulder, and tosses it his way; it hits the dust at his feet. “But there’s enough credits in there to last you a month, if you use them sparingly. There’ll be a shuttle waiting for you at Kurinth’s Valley, with enough fuel for you to make it to Elaadan.”

 

Kaetus snatches up the bag like a man half-starved, rifling through it until he’s satisfied with the contents. He takes one step, two.

 

And glances back, like he’s still expecting Reyes to try and stop him.

 

“This shouldn’t change anything,” he says, standing there, listless. “Someone has to pay, that’s Outcast regs-- there’s Outcast blood on Nexus hands, don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

 

“The Pathfinder isn’t to blame, Kaetus.”

 

“I know,” Kaetus says, looking at Reyes, resolute. “I know he isn’t.”

 

It’s not what Sloane would have done, letting it be. But he isn’t Sloane.

 

And Reyes doesn’t need to say it out loud, for him to hear it in the wake of his own words.

 

He looks down at the gun, slack in his grip. Looks back up at Reyes, looks through him, eyes distant. “Half the port thought she was larger than life,” he says. “That she was everybody’s goddamn salvation, that she was something-- more than human, somehow. But she was just a fucking person. She bled out like anybody, she--”

 

He laughs, rueful. He shakes his head.

 

“You know that already.”

 

If history marks them, if anyone remembers them, it will be only for the shadows they pretend to be. The disgraced right hand of a feral leader, the second-rate smuggler in bed with humanity’s hero. The moments that define them are encrypted: back-channels, eyes only, Ryder, unraveling at the edges. Reyes, holding him up.

 

Kaetus, unloading the pistol clip, and tossing it to the ground at his feet.

 

It isn’t about being a hero at all, making up for the things he can’t change with the things he still can. He didn’t come here to be a hero, he doesn’t need to be a hero-- just the kind of man heroes can lean on. The kind of man heroes come home to.

 

The kind of man Ryder comes home to.

 

He’ll watch Kaetus’s retreating figure until he can hardly make him out, between the mirage waves. He’ll watch until Kaetus is just a shape, swallowed up by black mountain shadows. The cool night air will creep under his skin, and the stars will start to fade overhead, and only then will he turn, and fire up his shuttle’s engines, and start the flight back.

 

He’ll find Scott exactly where he left him. Fast asleep, the sheets caught around his waist, the soft flat of his belly, the yield of his mouth. He’ll kiss his throat and the curve of his shoulder. He’ll crawl back under the covers with him.

 

Maybe Scott will wake, and ask him if everything is all right.

 

Maybe he’ll say yes.

 

Maybe they’ll bury his father’s helmet together, up on one of Kadara's mountainsides; maybe they’ll sit up there and talk, for a long time, without a bottle in their hands. Ryder will remember all the names of the people he couldn’t save. Reyes will remember all the faces of the people he chose not to. And they’ll meet somewhere in the middle, still counting down the minutes but counting them together, Ryder still leaving him behind but coming back. Coming back breathing, always coming back.

 

Maybe he’s thinking too far ahead.

 

Maybe they’ll just both fall asleep again, tangled in Ryder’s bed, waiting for morning--

 

However it happens, morning’s coming.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [find me on tumblr](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/)


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